This past weekend I got right into the spirit of things and processed the following...

Tomato sauce - Raw and fermented with only salt added. Fermented tomato sauce has amazing complex flavours click here for the recipe.

Fermented Chilli sauce - another fermented sauce that will take a long time to be ready. Traditional Tabasco ferments for 3 years, but I doubt mine will be around that long. It is really easy to make amazing fermented chilli sauces. Simply cut the stems off the peppers, leave the pepper whole, mince seeds and all, add ½ cup sundried sea salt per litre of minced chilli, mix well and place in a fermentation barrel, or container with an airlock. You can use any kind of peppers, hot or sweet or a mix. They all ferment well and the amazing flavours contained in the flesh come out in a complex delicious way. I add this kind of fermented chilli to everything, soups stews sauces etc. Another way to make a delicious fermented sauce is to roast peppers, put them through a mouli or machine that will take out the seeds and skins and then ferment in a bowl for a few days or a week, then put into small jars with a little olive oil on top to keep the air off, cover loosely and store. These are amazing earthy colours!

Now is the time to harvest all remaining basil leaves and dry them or make pesto. I make most of our pesto with basil/coriander/parsley or any other green even Lamb’s Quarters. Cover with oil, add finely chopped garlic to taste, add grated tasty hard cheese (I use kefir cheese I make and age until hard) then add whatever nuts you have or can collect. We have a lot of walnut trees in our area so walnuts it is.

Now is the time to harvest all your Austrian Hulless pumpkins that have yellow stripes on the skin, and remove the seed. Ferment for 24-36 hours and then remove all pumpkin threads and dry. Fermenting them not only removes the outside slimy layer but also removes the phytates making them far more nutritious. They taste way better too.

Now is the best time of the year to make vinegar! Apples are everywhere, if you have your own trees there will be many seconds that can be cut up for vinegar or if you don’t have a glut of apples you can simply keep all the apple cores. The key to making good vinegar is frequent tasting. If you leave vinegar too long it continues to work out until it goes from vinegar back to water, as it reacts with the air. It’s a shame to lose all that effort and resource. Find the recipe here.

Now is the time to make your root ferment to last all winter. I basically grate up all my favourite roots, beetroot, daikon, carrot, onion and garlic in whatever combination takes my fancy and ferment them in a large crock pot. This ferment will last all winter now and we eat ferments daily so it’s worth making a lot. You can make it in smaller jars no problem. Click here to see the recipe.

Now is also the time to collect nuts and store them where the rats can’t get to them. We’re all on the lookout for wild walnut trees in our area.

All of these recipies can be found in our Change of Heart recipe book which can be purchased here.

One example of how this does not work for us is that heritage tomato seeds commonly available around the world, are grown in California where the relative humidity is around 10%. When those organically grown (by agri-business) heritage seeds come here they are often extremely difficult to grow because they do best in 10% humidity (especially tomatoes) which we don’t have. Our humidity is closer to 80% or more. Our own NZ heritage seeds have been selected in our high humidity conditions and perform far better in most areas than seed grown in California.

The most important thing with open pollinates is that they were bred before the 1950’s and that they have been grown by families rather than agribusiness ever since.

One of the most special qualities of our very own personal heritage ‘seeds’, is that they are adapted to our own soils, climate and bodies. That may seem far fetched but we now have enough information about the DNA and ‘junk DNA’ of our bodies and seeds.

We can see there is a process of co evolution going on constantly and a process of adaption so that our seeds, the earth and our bodies are all expressions of each other, and I understand that it is all part of the amazing, overarching, survival mechanism that is in place in the universe! If you don’t already have your ‘own’ heritage seeds then ultimately, the best thing is to take what ever seeds you feel closest to from the best possible source, which has to be our own NZ heritage seed pool, and grow those to become your own family heritage seeds.

Finally if we only have around 1% of the heritage seeds left that were available 100 years ago, (which is my estimate from F.A.O. and other information available) and life ‘as we know it’ on Earth is dependant on the ‘web of life’ as defined by ecologists then saving what we have left is critical. The only people able to save our own NZ seed are New Zealanders. Our government does not care enough to do anything about helping us, so it’s up to us! Every time you plant a NZ heritage seed you are helping keep that seed line alive for the future.

The Koanga Institute is dedicated to collecting and keeping alive and available as many of these seed lines as we can. Our members are the life blood of our organisation so if you feel moved to help us save our own heritage seeds then please join the team! Click here to become a member.

Arohanui

Kay Baxter

Click here for more information on our Permaculture Design Courses.

Our New Zealand heritage potato collection has been endangered in recent years by a lack of effective rouging and selection and the recent arrival of the psyllid and so we are endeavouring to strengthen them again, back to having heavy crops as they used to do years ago. We made a lot of progress last season, through heavy rouging, selection and super nourishment, and we were very happy with the results. To see our potato collection and trial results click here.

This year has been totally different to last season, which was cool and wet. This year began very cold, our potatoes were frosted three times in late November, and they didn’t like that. Next season we’ll be prepared with frost cloth at the ready. Then it became super hot, heat wave material, and they don’t like that either! There were way less virus infected plants than last year, however, first with the frost, then the heat and the early psyllids that came with the heat took a huge toll on the plants. All season their tops grew weakly and never reached half of last seasons bulk above ground.

I was very nervous about what I would find in the actual trial potato collection. I was concerned we might have lost many of the cultivars in our collection.

It was great though to see how they recovered to a large degree with the application of Bio-pesticide, and irrigation.

It was extremely gratifying to help dig them and see the results! All cultivars had a huge number of tubers. They were small but mostly not marbles. They all looked very healthy, and some of our new cultivars this season did very well indeed. We decided not to weigh each potato crop this year because it was obvious they were very affected by the bad season and it takes a lot of time. Instead we filled in our chart with comments about each cultivar.

Once again we selected only the tubers from the best plants of each cultivar for our next years seed. Next season we’ll be better prepared for all eventualities and will weigh them when they are harvested again.

The outstanding ones in my mind were:

1.Moe Moe 2 - huge crop, excellent hard potatoes.

2.Matariki - looking very good, better every year since we’ve had them.

3. Whero whero - a new one in the collection, looks very good, very red skin, many eyes, heavy crop.

4. Uwhi - good as always.

5. Karupaera - huge crop looks like an excellent line similar to Karoro but with a patchy pink blush on the skin

6. Chatham Island Hollumby - new cultivar in our collection. Large crop, very interesting huge potatoes, despite the bad season.

7.Ngateuteu - looks the same as Karupaera, huge crop excellent line.

8. Maori Chief 1 - new cultivar in our collection, excellent line.

9. Whataroa - excellent as usual.

10.Red Surprise - time we named this line properly, it just appeared one year, a “surprise” in the garden. It is always a heavy cropper and an excellent line.

11. Old Blue - had the best crops I’ve ever seen!

12. Chatham Island - great as usual.

13. Gladstone - heavy good looking crop.

The most exciting thing this season, is that the seeds we grew from last year’s aerial seeds look incredible. They germinated very well, every seed grew, and they looked very healthy. The leaves looked far stronger than those of the potatoes in our Trial. Mark Christiensen also grew a load of seedlings to trial for us and his also look very interesting.

I’ve always wanted to find a potato that is red all through, and we grew several of those from the aerial seeds this season. Check out the picture below. It seems as though most of our potatoes have three main sorts of ancestors, the blue ones, the red ones and the white ones. We didn’t get any very yellow ones from the aerial seed trial which I was surprised about…. Did any of you? (We sent seed out to all of the people who sponsored last years potato trial)

We’ve selected the plants that looked the strongest and grew the biggest crops of interesting looking potatoes to plant again next season amongst our potato trial, as Bill Mollison recommends, as he observed the Peruvians doing. They select the best from the wild potatoes.

Some of these unusual potatoes will be available this season. We will also have available a limited amount of seed potatoes from the trial. Last year some of our members who grew these potatoes sent in pictures showing us their amazing results.

Conclusion from 2012-2013 trial results:

- Crops affected by late frosts then straight into drought, also affected by drought and psyllids.

- There was an obvious improvement in the average number of potatoes in each cultivar. Last season the variation was huge within cultivars, this year less so.

- There was a lot less yellow spotting and streaking in the leaves, and a lot less crinkly leaves. It was also difficult to do rouging when we had so much frost and drought damage, however next season we’ll get back into that.

- It was very exciting to see how vigorous the seedlings were and how healthy many of them were

- We’ll continue with our trial next season planting some of the healthiest seedlings in the trial patch for cross pollination and strengthening the genetic stock as done in Peru.

- It’s been a hard year to collect data, but it feels as though we have already selected out many low producing lines and we are averaging far heavier crops on individual plants. Next season we will be prepared for frost and early drought and anything else that is thrown for us, and next season we will weigh the crops.

- It was amazing to see how well the plants grew after having been ravaged by frost and then drought and then psyllids. the Bio-pesticide spray (which is microbes only) is amazing.

Thanks heaps to all of our sponsors……… this kind of thing can only be done with your support.

We are working our way through our orchard area where we planted our own herbal ley and taking out any large noxious grass clumps and other weeds that are unwelcome. Once we spade them out, there will be patches of bare dirt, where we will replant herbal ley seed or spring bulbs or comfrey etc. It is also time to apply your Autumn fruit tree fertilizer. We are using 1 kg of Nature’s Garden per young tree on the ground around the drip line of the trees.

Date: 18-19 May 2013
Location: Kotare Village, Hawkes Bay, New Zealand
Tutor: Taiamai Corker
Price: $300
Early Bird Price: $270

Date: 29 June 2013
Location: Kotare Village, Hawkes Bay, New Zealand
Tutor: Kay Baxter
Price: $150
Early Bird Discounted Price: $135 (until 3 weeks prior to the workshop. Book now!)

The challenge is to recoup their money through savings or selling extra produce from their gardens. Then they Hand Over a Hundy to a new family at the end of the year. This helps to create a cycle where each family is in fact handing over their
own hard work to keep the "seed" money ever changing into new hands. Since its creation in Midcanterbury HOAH has had over 50 families involved and transformed 200+ people lives by teaching them to grow their own food gardens. In the Mid Canterbury area, there have been about 20 mentors providing the knowledge, skills, time and energy helping the families. 

Since then Southland and Waikato have been launched with great enthusiasm and we are about to go into one of the most devastated areas in Christchurch East, to help reclaim food sovereignty and rebuild old skills lost in a younger generation. We are committed to continuing what we started out to do, grow food, families, community and the next generation. Since December 2012 we have had the great pleasure of welcoming Kay Baxter onto our national board where her many experiences will breath wisdom into our organisation. We are delighted and greatly honoured to have the backing of the Koanga Institute and feel we compliment each other well. As we grow and increase the numbers of families,mentors and regions we have needs that are ever increasing and ask if you are able to contribute to our goals and work, this would help to spread the message of what we feel. Every family should have an opportunity to learn to grow their own food. We appreciate any sponsorship and partner enquiries.

Jade Temepara

Founder of Hand over a Hundy


INVITATION
We are excited to announce our long awaited hub, named during a coffee session with friends, Te hUb (The Hub) is almost open! After months of preparations and planning, waiting for insurance and building alterations, we are nearly there.
Te hUb, we anticipate, will put Ashburton and Midcanterbury on the map as a one stop education, environment, office and resource spot all in one. We will offer classes on seed saving and a new seed saving network, starting gardens, preserving, environmentally friendly products and services and will be the HQ for Hand over a Hundy to continue its important work.

Where:Te hUb, Bio Grains Building 35 Dobson Street West, Ashburton
Time:7pm-9pm When:26th April 2013 RSVP: Jade Temepara 027 4760204/ 03 3039199

We are hoping to be in business with some of our exeptional giftware stocked, cash sales will be operating that night.

We will once again have these Austrian Hulless pumpkin seeds in our July catalogue for you, to grow your own high quality pumpkin seed. These pumpkins produce larger seed than those commercially available.

Because these pumpkins have come from Austria, they produce well in a short growing season, and if you pick them as soon as they turn streaky yellow they will continue cropping and ina warm climate you may expect 6 mature pumpkins from each plant.

One of the new cultivars came from my plant collection trip around Pouto with Logan Forrest. It came from an old Dalmatian family’s garden right on the harbour’s edge. Another is common around the South Island and has been sent in by several members and came from the old whitebaiter’s huts around Whataroa, and another was sent in by a member. They all have colour on their skins. One looks as though it will have purple tips, another more pink/red tips and the third looks as though it is going to have red skins with white tips!

It is a little early to be sure, I’m digging them up before they are mature, so we’ll have to wait another 66 weeks for the final verdict on exactly what we have, but it looks very good anyway!

The garden is almost looking like a winter garden now. We’ve made around 6 cubic metres of compost this season from our summer garden carbon crops and other crops.

The compost that is going back onto the heavy feeding section of the winter garden is really great compost, made with last winter high brix oats and minerals added. I haven’t needed to add any fertiliser, only compost, and the brassicas are going for it so we’ve made a lot of difference over the 18 months since we began.

I’ve planted my early White garlic and my shallots and potato onions, I’ve divided my Multiplying leeks, my Welsh Bunching onions and my Giant Chives and planted them into the new heavy feeders section of the garden.

I’ve set up a liquid feed barrel again and will use it in a different way to the past. I’m making liquid cow manure and seaweed, and will apply it to the garden after adding vermicast and molasses to it , to hold the water soluble minerals so that they don’t burn up the soil carbon and run off polluting the waterways etc. I’ll probably use it in a watering can to give a boost to things in the heavy feeding section or the root section that look as though they need a boost.

We’re flat out drying basil, perilla, dried beans, peppers and mushrooms in the solar drier, fermenting peppers for paste and making ferments with daikon beetroot and carrots for the winter, and enjoying the Indian Summer.

The Koanga Institute, which resides within Kotare Village, is actively seeking a MARKETING, PUBLICATIONS, AND WEBSITE INTERN. We are looking for a bright indivual who is passionate about sharing what is happening here at the Koanga Institute with the world. Someone with a keen eye for a good story and a knack for taking awesome photos to place on our homepage and facebook page is a must. Are you keen to learn more about permaculutre? Urban Garden Design? Seed Saving? Soil health? Would you like the opportunity to develop skills in internet marketing? Here's your chance to live within a fledgling intentional community being designed around the principles of permaculture. Here's your chance to take a hiatus from mainstream culture and nourish your soul & body with nutrient-dense food grown locally and organically. The successful candidate will possess a positive attitude and prove to be an excellent communicator, listener, and creative, forward-thinker. For a detailed job description, please email valery@koanga.org.nz. Please send CV and cover letter to Valery Soltis, Managing Director; valery@koanga.org.nz. Applications close May 1, 2013. Start date is negotiable.

Nurseryman, microbe cultivator, mushroom-cultivator and experimenter extraodinaire: Shaked 

Of the thousands upon thousands of varieties of fungi out there, few produce fruits that appeal to us humans and our sensitive and discerning palettes. Of those adored by man, none reign more supremely than the venerable Shiitake. Here at Koanga, our very own Shaked, beautiful partner with the Earth that he is, has gone through the process inoculating oak logs and the…fruits…of his labor have gloriously come through the woodwork to show their brown crowns to the shade.

 Shiitake Kit

So what does this process look like? Well… theoretically it could look like a kaleidoscopic pattern of wood arranged in any shape ushering in a symphony of shiitake life -- yet we digress. We'll take you through it from strange and mysterious spawn to brown and delicious themselves, and using the most available medium, freshly cut hardwood logs, and in our case oak. Quick distinction: freshly cut generally means no more than three days after cutting, but what this is really dependent on is the amount of competition the fungi you want to encourage--the Shiitake--and all those others. The sizing of the logs is also something that could be played with, but Shaked opted for logs about 10-20cm in diameter and in lengths of about one meter to a meter and a scosche, perfect for shifting periodically. In general, the harder the wood, the longer it will take the mycelium to infiltrate and decompose the wood, so it may result in more fruitings throughout the years. The spawn Shaked used were wooden dowels inoculated with the Shiitake mycelium. If interested, check out our Shiitake, Oyster and other mushroom kits we have available here. 

Dowel Spawn Plugs 

The dowel plugs were snugly fit into holes Shaked had drilled for them specifically. They're spaced diagonally (and it is positively extra-credit to be thinking diagonal spacing of bio-intensive garden beds here) about 15-20cm apart. And, voila the recipe is complete, the bun in the oven so to speak, with the bake time now up to the already-thriving mycelium, making contact from dowel to oak. To provide maximum encouragement for the Shiitakes and to do our best to eliminate competition from other fungi which might be drooling over the fresh cut wood, the plugs should be covered with a painted layer of wax. Beeswax is recommended! The mycelial network will then safely extend itself through the log and in about four to six months time, with intermittent fruitings for the next several years.

 Now--like a chef in the kitchen--Shaked let everything alone and came back when the time was right to coax the mushroom bloom. Essentially, the fruiting process can be let go to come of its own accord, or as a conducted experience by recreating cool, wet conditions i.e. giving them a good plunging. Shaked, aware of this, gave each log a consistent and rotational 24 hour soak to encourage a simultaneous fruiting en masse. Success was achieved and mushrooms, delicious mushrooms went through a maturation and ripening process that was just a delight to witness. And happily we were able to document and now share the process. 

One day after soak

Two days after soak

Three days after soak

Four days after soak

 The final step--the mastication process! Thoroughly enjoyed here on sourdough pizzas, in soups, and with eggs for breakfast--and enjoyed by you in whichever way tastes best to your buds and feels best to your body. 

Only in the last weeks do you really look back and realize...”Wow, we learned...ALOT”.  It speaks to the depth of experience of everyone at Kotare Village, that they are able to pass on so much experience to interns like us, who came in green, and somewhat unexperienced getting our hands dirty.  But luckily, the skills we learned from amazing teachers like Kay, Bob, Tim, Yotam, Taiamai, and Byron helped us move forward to a state of confidence, and awareness.  Now we can look in our garden, and our community, and understand the nutrition we need for ourselves, our family, and how to grow it in a way which nurtures our body and the soil.  I feel like I’ve been given a gift of years of experience, condensed into 10 weeks of immersion at Kotare Village.

For myself, I never would have guessed how much effort, and enjoyment goes into the process of digging paths, taking care of a nursery, and planning out food forests (which was my focus during the internship).  Because we were living amongst everyone in Kotare village, the things we learned were more than just a transformation in skill, but an emotional, and spiritual journey into a lifestyle which felt sane...which felt right. 

However, Kay and Bob’s style of teaching and permaculture planning is not just holistic, but powerfully logical.  When our soil, and our plants our out of balance with the right nutrients and minerals, so are our bodies.  Therefore, the style of gardening we learned also had to restore the soil. 

Looking around our world, one can see the level of insanity which surrounds us all.  We sacrifice our health, and our sanity to sit on a computer all day to buy things to throw in the trash, we live apart from the food, and the gardens which nourish our bodies.  Most of all, we willingly separate ourselves from our neighbors, without knowing the joy, cooperation, and security that can come from community building.  Kotare Village, home of the Koanga Institute, seems like a shining beacon in an utterly, utterly insane world; and I felt deeply honored, and grateful to have been there, contributing for the last two and a half months. 

Looking forward into the future is terrifying, because we have to come to grips with the fact that we will have to completely transform ourselves to deal with a world with extreme weather, heat, drought, peak oil, water shortages, and famine. However, my experience at Kotare Village gives me courage to face this future, and push myself to be the best person I could be."

Click here to read more about the Growing Soil, Food & Health Spring Internship.

-Raleigh Latham

2 MAY

LAST QUARTER

GARDEN

In warmer areas, last chance to weed beds and prepare for winter, transplanting last seedlings or sowing the last compost crops.

Cover compost heaps to avoid water logging over winter.

Make sure all chooks, ducks, and small animals have adequate housing for winter.

Drag out your cloches and cold frames to cover salad crops to keep them growing over winter.

Prepare Garlic beds if planting on the solstice.

ORCHARD

In warmer areas, last chance to weed beds and prepare for winter, transplanting last seedlings or sowing the last compost crops.

Cover compost heaps to avoid water logging over winter.

Make sure all chooks, ducks, and small animals have adequate housing for winter.

Drag out your cloches and cold frames to cover salad crops to keep them growing over winter.

Prepare Garlic beds if planting on the solstice.

10 MAY

NEW MOON

GARDEN

Prepare garlic, shallot and tree onion beds, manure and compost well, make sure the beds are very free draining.

Prepare beds for strawberries and transplant.

Prepare any other beds you have the energy to double dig or U Bar. This is a good month for bed preparation to help avoid stress in spring. Planting compost crops in prepared beds now for early Spring veges will make things far easier in August September. The more aerated the soil is over the winter the easier it will be in spring.

Direct sow rocket, corn salad, ruruhau, Red Russian kale mustard lettuce and Coral Mizuna under cloche to eat as fresh salad greens (mesclun) over winter.

Sow violas, pansies, heartsease, poppies and snap dragons for Spring flowering.

Last chance to plant lupins and other compost or green manure crops.

Plant broad beans into trays in warmer areas and transplant when first leaves appear.

Plant brassicas now in warmer areas, - broccoli, kale, cabbage, cauli etc for early Spring transplanting.

Transplant last of the winter veges and flowers.

ORCHARD

Clean up orchard herbal ley and mediterranean herb banks, replanting if necessary.

Last chance to get drainage, fencing, shifting of compost and mulch done in preparation for tree planting next month.

18 MAY

FIRST QUARTER

GARDEN

Fill your empty garden beds with compost/carbon crops as soon as you can to get them in… before it turns too cold for strong growth.

Plant your strawberries if you have not already done so, they area so heavy feeders if you want high production, mulch well to avoid winter weeding.

Last chance to direct sow rocket, cornsalad, ruruhau, Red Russian kale, Henry Harraington Chinese cabbage, Coral Mizuna, mustard lettuce, Asian Greens Mix, and Winter Mesclun Mix under a cloche to eat as fresh salad greens (mesclun) over winter.

Plant Garlic, Tree Onions, Shallots, Potato Onions now making sure your beds are well aerated, well fed and not too wet over winter. These vegetables are heavy feeders, to crop well and to have high brix crops they need the right minerals in the right relationships. EF Nature's Garden is what we use while we are building our soils up.

Sow heritageviolas, pansies, heartsease, poppies, hollyhocks, stock sweet peas, calendula and snap dragons for Spring flowering.

Feed all winter crops while soil is still warm enough to encourage growth both sold fert and foliar feeding can be appropriate.

ORCHARD

Feed citrus, feijoas and all deciduous fruiting trees now while the soil is warm for strong healthy growth in Spring and good fruit set. Fruiting trees need the right minerals in the relationships just like vegetables if they are to grow strongly and fruit (high brix) well. We suggest EF Soil Force especially formulated for orchard soils in New Zealand.

First feed with a balanced fertilser then Spray Neem oil or Koanga BioPesticide on apples and their roots if you have a problem with woolley aphid. Woolley aphid are only present when you trees are low brix, ie they don't have the right minerals in the right relationship to remain strong enough to resist pest issues. Water stress makes the problem worse as well., check that your tree roots are moist , not dry or too wet!

25 MAY

FULL MOON

GARDEN

Foliar feed three days after full moon, EF Growth Foliar if you are trying to get your vege up to size before winter.

In warmer areas this is the last chance to sow carrots, daikon, turnips, radishes and beetroot before spring.

Plant strawberries if not already in, strawberries are heavy feeders too, pine needles make great mulch for them.

 Make compost heaps with all the autumn weeds and material available, be sure to add Compost Minerals and Microbes if you are making your heap with low brix materials. Recycling the deficiencies in your compost will not grow high brix crops next season.

If May continues warm and dry, double dig any beds that need it for early Spring crops and plant Lupins or oats, in warmer areas as carbon crops now.

ORCHARD

If you are planning on planting fruit trees this winter our Koanga Gardens range heritage trees are available from the Koanga Fruit Tree catalogue and from Sarah at Edible Garden . Supporting these businesses supports us to continue collecting and saving heritage fruit trees and making them available again with their stories for the future. It also supports the research programs run by the Koanga Institute to find regenerative ways for home gardeners to grow our food crops.

Finish planting spring bulbs.

Continue wrenching fruit trees if they are to be dug up or shifted, one side at  at a time, so as not to shock them too much.

Desucker bananas if not already done.

Feed your trees if not already done this Autumn, to prepare for strong growth in Spring.

Good time to foliar feed citrus with EF Fruit Foliar to encourage a good fruit set and and feijoas with EF Growth Foliar to encourage healthy growth before they flower in Spring.

We have created simple step-by-step instructions for you, as a member, to log in to our new web site. Please do NOT create a new account. You are in our new system as a member, you simply need to reset your password. (click on forgot password using the email you have on file with us) 

To see simple step-by-step instructions with images, click here.

I believe that it is vitally important for all of us to be learning how to take care of our soil, to be growing our own food and growing it in ways that create nutrient dense food. There is mounting evidence that our health is totally dependent on having a diet that is nutrient dense. It seems that malnutrition is behind every known disease (World Health Organisation website).

We can do something about that. We can learn how to prepare and eat nutrient dense food, and we can also learn to grow nutrient dense food.

We must also always choose seeds that are capable of growing nutrient dense food. The seeds that do this best are very clearly our heritage seeds, seeds that have always been saved to nourish us, seeds that have always been grown in regenerative systems.

All of our Koanga seeds are heritage seeds.

All of our seeds are organically grown.

All of our seeds have been organically grown and none of our seeds are hybrids or grown in systems where glyohosphate is used.

All of our seeds are grown in regenerative, biologically active systems, most by now have been grown with a Brix level of over 12 which means your plants chemical structures become more healthful and complex and will put you at a big advantage beginning your journey towards growing nutrient dense food.

All of our seeds are grown in New Zealand and are adapted and suited to our soils, climate, and our bodies. Yes, the new science of epigenetics shows us how our food communicates and how our DNA is more likely to recognise and be nourished by the food that our ancestors ate.. and how that food is able to nourish us more fully than the food of other cultures!

The only seeds you can grow that will be better than ours will be seeds you save yourself!

All of our seeds are suitable for saving your own seeds.

Up until recently we were selling a few lines of Carbon crop seeds that we were not growing ourselves (as we acknowledged) however we have now decided to stop selling them as our commitment to guaranteeing that all of the seeds we sell have the possibility of growing nutrient dense food or compost material. Any seeds coming through the industrial system have quite possibly been grown in soils that have been sprayed with glyphosphate. We feel it's time to take a strong stand and in no way be associated with any seeds we do not know the whole story of. We care about our future, we care about your future and we care about the earth.

All of our seeds have been hand grown by artisan gardeners who care.

Our focus is on saving our NZ heritage seeds and most of them are NZ heritage seeds. We only use overseas heirlooms when we have gaps. Almost all of the overseas heritage seed lines were added to our collection over 20 years ago when we began this journey so by now they have become part of the our families. My children grew up with them and now their children see them as a normal part of their lives…

When you buy Koanga Seeds you become an active part of supporting us to save the seeds of our own land and our own ancestors…. you become a link in the unbroken chain of co-evolution

Kay Baxter

Willow was born in 2010 and is a black dehorned cow from Patsy Leek in 2011 and has had 1 calf. She is quiet and milks well by machine, probably would do well by hand if from an experienced milker. Registered.

Lilly was born in 2010, a black dehorned cow with no calf, quiet and timid, she is also registered.

We also have our herd bull Kotare available for sale, born 2011, with these girls. He is an outstanding little guy, he has large long horns, he is quite small but beefy. His mother Condalesa is a great milker, so he is likely to produce cows that milk well.

We would like $5,000 for them sold as a herd.

Please email Taimai taimaicorker@yahoo.co.nz or phone on 0211436854

Day 3 – What's in it for me?

Today we are going to talk about a subject near and dear to my heart, and that is Return on Investment (ROI). Another way to think about ROI is to ask yourself what you will receive in return for the risks you take when investing your time, energy, or money? What's in it for you?

To simplify the discussion we will assume that everything can be calculated into inputs and outputs and summarize our arguments down to how much you put in vs how much you get back to help identify whether our ROI is positive or negative.

Let's start with an example of what I would consider a great ROI... When you plant an apple tree, it may take a few years to start producing but once it is producing it should continue to produce for decades to come. You have a one time upfront cost and you receive a dividend for as long as that tree is cared for. To help illustrate in dollars and cents, assume you spend $200 a year on apples at the store and the alternative is to spend $200 worth of time, money, and energy to plant your own apple tree. You will have returned your original investment once that tree has produced $200 worth of apples. If it takes 5 years before it starts producing the first yield of $200, you would have earned 20% ROI on your initial investment – averaged over the 5 year period. The real fun comes from the fact that on the 6^th and subsequent years, you will be receiving 100% ROI from your original investment for every $200 worth of apples the tree produces.

Try getting that yield in a local bank account!

An example of a bad investment? When I was a teenager I spent all my free time (about 8+ hours a day over a 5 year period) playing video games... My ROI in this case was nothing more than horrible vision and good exercise for my hands - and being a teenager - I certainly didn't need the video games to exercise my hands!

The point is - that time could have been spent learning a valuable skill, starting a small business, or by doing any number of productive things with my time. So in my situation at least, the ROI of investing all that time and money was negative as it produced nothing of lasting value.

The important take away today is that you want to structure your life to maximize your ROI in whatever your are doing – not just for economic gain, but personal gain as well.

 We spent some time today planning the installation of a Ram Pump. This is a technology that prior to today I never knew existed - and yet - it has a fantastic ROI so it is certainly a technique/method everyone should have their toolbox.

Without going into the technical details of how it operates, all you need to know is that the pump relies on the kinetic energy of flowing water to pump the water without any power or energy other than the natural flow of the stream/river it is working with. In effect, you install this bad-boy once and it will pump water for years costing you nothing more than a little bit of maintenance once and a while – not much different than our apple tree example above. If it were to cost $500 in parts and labor to install and last 25 years, there is little doubt it would have paid for itself over the alternative of an electric powered pump.

The more I think about it, the more Permaculture in general is about maximizing ROI. The systems all have initial up front costs but once in place they will continue to yield a great return with minimal inputs allowing us the free time to enjoy the outputs.

It will be interesting to calculate my ROI of attending this course when I am done... How much will this knowledge and experience return to me over the rest of my life? I suspect it will prove to be one of my best investments yet.

Day 2 – Don't forget your deodorant!

 Had I known when I woke up this morning that I would be destined for a 3 hour workout, I probably would have dressed more appropriately for the occasion. Sometimes, life can be like that and it's those little surprises that keep things interesting – or so I keep telling myself :-).

To be fair, we were indeed given a choice this morning between challenging our intellect or our bodies, and as fun as calculating the sun angles on the sleep-outs can be (sarcasm intended), I was in the mood for a bit of a stretch having felt a bit lazy from my lack of physical activity these last few weeks.

** I should note here that I (and a few other students) have been at the Koanga Institute now for 3+ weeks as this Internship conveniently follows their PDC **

Perhaps it is just a matter of definitions or simple miscommunication but I honestly expected to go for a pleasant nature hike in the mountains to assist in the search of suitable trees that we can cut down for use in the sleep-outs... I guess you can imagine my surprise when it finally dawned on me how we were going to move those freshly cut “shoulder killers” from point A to B... Appropriate Technology.

And that my friends brings me to today's “aha” moment...  As I panted and puffed like a little girl an out of shape old man, trying my hardest to ignore the sweat that persistently trickled down my back before disappearing into the crack of my... uh, well... I'm sure you get the point. Let's just say it was through this strenuous physical activity that I came to the following realization:

If you were like me living in the big city paying hundreds of dollars a year in gym memberships, you are wasting your time and money.

Think about it... You pay to go to the gym, and usually dread going each and every day. Not only are you paying to be there, you are usually paying to get there and back (travel costs) and what do you accomplish?

 You expend energy in the most wasteful manner possible. We are supposed to be permaculturists!

To capture and store energy is one of the key principles in design, and yet, so many of us simply waste it without consciously knowing it. When I'm at the gym pushing weights or running on the treadmill I am accomplishing nothing but staying in shape. All that energy is going to waste as heat with nothing but lost calories to show for it. On the other hand, as I move these god forsaken logs closer to their final home, I am expending the same amount of energy, but I am putting that energy to use. Whether I am moving logs, cutting wood, or mixing cobb... That energy is well spent as it is working to produce a lasting result. The energy I invest towards moving these logs will be stored in the completed project which will give years of use to the occupants. This is a good investment. It is hard to see how you could achieve similar ROI when going to the gym, and I think it's worth thinking about to anyone who still has their memberships.

Day One of Natural Building and Appropriate Tech Internship

With our bellies full and our minds buzzing from the caffeine nutrient dense food, we took a step back to observe the bigger picture of what we all wanted out of this Appropriate Technology Internship Course.

I was pleasantly surprised to see the staff take our suggestions into account when it came to drafting up a list of projects we were interested in learning about. We were like kids in a candy shop, ready and eager with our shopping list of suggested projects to tackle. It was obvious from the get-go that there was no shortage of things to do, and that we were unlikely to be bored on this skill-building journey.

Of particular interest to me is the fact that many projects will be running concurrently, allowing us to tailor our learning experience to the skill sets we desire. With only 10 weeks in duration, it's hard to imagine just how far we will progress through this ambitious “to-do” list as we attempt to build up the infrastructure in and around Kotare Village. But – and it is a big but – if there is one thing I have learned it is to never underestimate a group of highly motivated intelligent students, of which we have no shortage. We are all here for the same reason, and that is to leave with more knowledge and experience than we have today. I have no doubt that we will accomplish that goal and complete everything we start.

The layout is done in such a way that each morning we will be provided with a list of ongoing projects in which we can choose to participate. Today's menu included the option of working on one of the two sleep-outs we will be building from the ground up, or preparing for the setup of a flying fox to help transport large loads over the nearby ravine. While today is one of those days I would have liked to be in two places at once, I decided to stick with the sleep-out because the profiling of that house is a life skill that can very easily be translated into the building of numerous other structures (garage, greenhouse, workshop, etc) in the future.

Having come from a sit on my butt in front of a computer all day technical background, it was a bit of a challenge at first to adjust to the hands-on mentality. The attitude here is to give us the instructions before throwing us into the deep end of the pool to see how well we can swim. Sure, the staff have promised to play lifeguard in case we need their assistance or guidance but, for the most part, this internship is about us and our ability to work together through problems, overcome our weaknesses, and to defy the odds stacked against us. :-)

For me, at least, if I am not learning something new everyday then I feel like I have wasted my time – I like to walk away from each day with a key takeaway or “aha” moment as they refer to them over here. The primary realization I took away from today's session it is that there is no need to go hundreds of thousands of dollars into debt to have a place to call home. With A LOT less money, a little bit of knowledge, and a few friends everyone has the ability to create an efficient and livable home for their families. Sure we are just working on sleep-outs right now, but the skills we are learning here can easily be adapted and expanded upon to create a place anyone would be proud to call “home”.

It's just another way of looking at things really. Before the start of this course I would never have imagined being able to construct a building safe enough to step in, let alone sleep in... Just one day in and I'm already starting to see what's possible when you change your way of thinking.

- Jackson Smart, Natural Blg and Appropriate Tech Intern, Feb 27, 2013

Please be aware that our new website will not recognise your previous log in. You will need to create a new log in. I can assure you that you are still in our database as a member and you will still receive your membership benefits!

So frankly we have a lot of different projects and sometimes we aren't very well organised. Sometimes we begin one project and don’t finish it or want to begin a project but don’t know where to begin. So Angry Ben created a list of all the projects and how they are link to each other. Then he wrote down basics steps to take the leadership of one project. Like speaking to Bob and Tim for the brief, locating the materials, checking how many people are associated to the task etc. It is a very empowering process to have created this project poster. It directly had an impact on the motivation of us all. Boosting our will to take more responsibility of the projects.

Angry Ben’s posters. Thanks you so much!

A group went on the plastering of the seed room. They created a number of different mixes to see which plaster works the best. They used paper pulp for their mixes which seems to have done a real good job.

Paper pulp getting mix.

Another group is the building group. Time to set up the rafters! A big step towards the roof. Standing on the floorboards of the mezzanine, they lifted up a big log to put it from the front wall to the back wall. It has been very enjoyable to see how the structure is advancing step by step.

The first rafter being set up.

Today, I went with the ram pump group! A perfect sunny day to set up our pipes to see how well it is working. We went to the creek and lay down the pipes. First we had to build a little dam in the creek to raise the head of the water. Then connect the metal pipes that are bring the water from the dam to the pump. This is the primary check in and…

It is working!

Then we needed to climb the slope with a pipe and see if the water is going up. So we climbed approximately 30 meters higher than the top head of the water and it is also working! Amazingly well. I definitely advise any one reading these articles to check more info about ram pumps on internet.

You can just see an orange and a blue shirt on the picture. It is the very bottom of the creek where the pump is. And just with the flow of the stream it is pumping the water all the way up here.

 Oscar Morand

Article 20 of Natural Building and Appropriate Tech Internship

I spent almost the whole day with Simon. Our mission was to create some floorboards. For this we took some long boards from the old cattle yard. An amazing timber. I have no idea what kind, but it is definitely some hard long lasting wood.

 After taking the nails out of the boards we passed them through a machine call a thickener. Basically it takes out a really thin layer of wood. We removed the very first layer that has been damaged due to being exposed by the elements. And amazing! Under this layer of moss and lichen we discover these beautiful shining reddish boards.

On the left, the wood before, on the right, the wood after!

With all these little shavings it pays to wear glasses and scarf!

Oscar Morand

Article 19 of Natural Building and Appropriate Tech Internship

Rain on the forecast, but not much, so let’s keep going with the house! As usual we had a morning check-in where the different projects are discussed and the students can choose whatever they want to do.

Todays Options are:

• grey water system implementation with Bob

• finishing the rocket barbecue

• and the sleep-out

 I spent the day working on the sleep out. We had to dig out some pumice. It was amazing to see the different layers in the soil. First there is a top soil, very smooth and dark and straight after a layer of pumice, all crumbly and orange yellowish. And if we keep going we find some white silt that sticks together. The idea is to use the pumice to create a insulation layer. First, two inches of pumice, then a sheet of plastic and one more layer of pumice. Then it is time to raise the level of this floor. We don’t have a vibrating plate anymore and we are going to create our mud floor after we have a roof. So by laying all the material now we will compact it the next weeks only by working and walking on it.

Shelly and Tim, the compacting crew!

 And now time to create the mezzanine. This means that we are not going to work on floor level anymore. Everyone climbs on the building, secure themselves, and begin to assemble the poles to have an amazing mezzanine. It is going to be huge but still inside the council regulations.

All in the air

Standing on a pole at 2 meters high and working with timber at the same time is not easy, however, some found tricks to stabilize the work being done.

Rafa stabilizing the timber for Big Ben to cut.

The other team are still working in the shed and we are looking forward to hear what they have achieved for the day!

Oscar Morand

Article 18 of Natural Building and Appropriate Tech Internship

It rained all night and my mattress is wet! Otherwise life is pretty good at the Kotare Village. With water pouring from the sky, it has definitely been a day to spend in the workshop and do some undercover work.

 Every student had their own project.

 Silus painting his solar oven with a waterproof paint layer

 Tom and Sarah processing the skin of a possum that has been caught this morning by one of the trap.

One of the projects was to finish our rocket barbecue and do some more oxy-torch to adjust the steel g-shape to have a better draw.

 And as soon as the rained stop we had two super motivated persons to jump on the building and keep work going!

 Thanks heaps to Simon and Rafa.

Oscar Morand

 Article 17 of Natural Building and Appropriate Tech Internship

And we begin the fifth week. Already halfway through the internship! As it is well known, time flies when you're having fun!

Even as time goes quickly Monday felt like a pretty slow day. Two interns took Monday off to spend a longer weekend with their family. And when they came back they looked really happy and motivated to keep going. We missed them during this weekend and are glad that they came back.

During this weekend we had a special event. We helped Yotam, Niva and Lily to set up their new home, a tipi!

PICTURE 1

Seven metres in diameter. It is a big one.

 Very enjoyable experience and it gave me ideas for a future habitation.

We spent they day on the building site. The building is looking good and the walls are standing strong, all bolted at the base. Time to do the side walls and our team has installed the bracing. A big brace on the west side and two others on the east side.

The roof is going to extend the back of the sleep-out to create a veranda. So the poles to create the roof will need to sit on some others studs at the back. This means more foundations to create. Thankfully, Rafa and Big Ben look like they are in charge of the process, and have begun to create the different necessary parts to put the foundations in place.

I went with the group for installing a ram pump. We left the Institute and it begun to rain. Under the rain we surveyed the site, thought a little bit about the different options and fixed the ram pump. In the next few days we will go back there and install all the pipes. And we will see how well this ram pump is functioning. It is definitely an exciting moment!

Picture n°2

The Ram pump bolted to the stone under it.

Oscar Morand

Article 16 of Natural Bldg and Appropriate Tech Internship

Two big days for us! We spent them working on our front wall.

 Since Thursday, while the sun was shining on our sweaty bodies, we worked hard. Our skills improved, mastering the art of chiselling, drilling and bolting. Now that we already raised up our back wall we have more experience on what to do and what not to do. The process went smoother, definitely.

Oscar (myself) chiselling.

Simon with the homemade long drill to go through all the depth of the timber.

Yes! The windows fit.

 Some students also went on their own project. We are ready to set up the ram pump. And a group of people harvested heaps of pine’s needles in the forest. This material will serve as a light earth mix to fill in our walls. Good insulation, we are looking forward to put it into the walls.

7 cubic meters of pine needles. Thanks to the group who went harvesting them.

 At the same time on the building site. Grasped by a highly vibrational cosmic wave Rafa begin to harmonise himself with the structure.

 And after that, went to lift the whole front wall by himself.

 But it is a lot of timber! So we came to help him!

 Not so easy to lift. So we gathered all together, prepared ourselves and begin this big event. Ropes, a jack and a lot of muscles!

 And here we go. RAAAAAAAH!

 And HUMPFS!

 And more RAAAAAAAH!

 And… And… And…

da-dadada-da-dAH-DAAAAAh

 Magnificent. So glad to finish the week with this awesome accomplishment. We are all satisfied and looking forward to keep going with the building.Here are the names and materials we used for the walls while they were horizontal.

 Front wall

-          Four and a half studs

-          Two lintels

-          Two top plates

-          Two bracers

-          And a hell of a lot of threaded rod, washers and nuts

 Back wall

-          Three studs

-          One top plate

-          One brace

-          And a little bit less threaded rod, washers and nuts

 It is a lot of material. It was definitely a good idea to assembles the wall on a horizontal way. Having vertigo, climbing up there with these big logs is not for me. Working with round timber is an enjoyable experience. It does take time but the result is just beautiful, a true artistic structure. And even if we are assembling a square building the round timber add a harmonious atmosphere.

 See you next week.

 Oscar Morand

Article 15 of Natural Bldg and Appropriate Tech Internship

Big Step for us today, we did put into place our first wall! Highly motivating event, the structure is moving upward and it is very encouraging.

 To begin with we had to finish the wall on its horizontal position. Big Ben taught us how to use the chisel. I really appreciated this tools that totally fit the them of our intern ship: appropriate technology.

Tom chiselling a flat part on the stud to lock it with the top plate.

Basically we first decided very precisely how to install our wall, while all the parts where still able to move independently from each other. This task asked for a lot of precision.

Measuring the needed length of the top plate.

 Once we were satisfied about the shape we begin to lock it into place. Our wall is composed of three studs, one top plate and one brace. Every time that a piece of timber touch an other one a flat surface on both poles was being chiselled to create a good grip between both mediums and then they were bolt together.

Sarah creating the flat area for the washer of the bolt to sit in.

The top plate being bolt to the studs.

 Now our wall is solid, almost over engineered. We are pretty sure that it is not going to move. We have been precise enough and the best is that it even looks square!

 Ladies and Gentlemen it is time for the show.

 “Drums in the background…”

 Participants are ready to…      …lift the wall! Yoo-hoo!

And we are doing the hard way, muscle!

Every one is here and PUSH!

Lifting the wall.

 In fact it is amazing what the strength of many human beings put together can do. It was not this heavy at all.

 First wall, done!

Our very first one.

 We just need to fix it with some bolts to the steel bars coming out of the bond beam. Hopefully our studs were perfectly aligned with them. The studs are 25 millimeters up the concrete to not allow any kind of moisture going into the wood.

Waiting to be bolted.

It is a big event for us and also a real relief after all the hard work that we did since the beginning of the week. A highly satisfying moment for all of us.

Now we just need to start the other one. And the incredible thing is that we begun in the afternoon and the process went way faster this time. Maybe we will be ready to raise the second wall by tomorrow.

 During this afternoon some extra activity took place for the people who didn’t had much to do on the building site. We cannot always be all involved at the same time for sure. A group of person begin to tan some sheep’s skin and weld together the compression room for the ram pump.

Myself I began an experiment to grow plants with chlorophyll content inside the leaves without sun. I am not going to say more about it and will write in the future a full post about the results.

See you tomorrow,

Oscar Morand

Article 14 of Natural Bldg and Appropriate Tech Internship

 All right, we are building two sleep-outs. We come from various place around the world and various backgrounds. One of us is a builder, the other one, me included, we are not. We all learned a lot since the beginning of the internship. But very often we were told what to do and it is totally fine.

 Simon suggested that we really dive into the project and the plans. Basically the plan is there but it shows the walls and the roof how it is supposed to be. It doesn’t show how to put in place the wall, how to set up the roof. And this process is up to us. Now we have to figure out how to put all the bit and pieces into place. Lots of hypothesis, lots of theory, a little bit a frustration and heaps of thinking.

 Going through the plans, all together.

 It is a little bit like the puzzle into the Kinder Surprise. There is always a few seconds of unknown where we just don’t know what is the top and what is the bottom. So imagine for a whole house, even if it is small, the plans are complex. Especially for people like me who have never looked at this kind of paper.

 Thinking a little bit more, on site.

 But the collective intelligence is here and slowly, step-by-step we all begin to understand what we are going to create. A big step was also to get familiar with all the specific words on building. Here are a few: top plate, stud, girt, brace, bearer, etc… I will not go through the entire list. But we made one and it helps a lot. Coming from Switzerland and speaking French as my mother tongue, I really struggled with all this vocabulary. My head was steaming!

 Big Ben drawing a side view of the building.

This has been a long process and all the steps have not been detailed enough yet. But we definitely made a step forward towards to the understanding of the big picture. We also learned a lot about what we could have done differently like first surveying the available material and then create the design of the sleep-out instead of the inverse. One more time, we can always do a better job.

To be honest, even if we all understand the importance of this step, we went through a bit of frustration. This type of learning process suite some persons, but not every one. It is highly theoretical and needs a lot of visualisation in the head. The group kind a split up into two between the own highly passionate about it and the other one who just want to do something more physical.

It is worth to mention that we all feel closer to the project. We can all picture what it is going to be from the general up to the detailed. Anyway, let’s go back on what we have achieved in these two days.The bond beam is done! Beautifully done, strong, and fitting the local council regulations. We are happy!

 Being freshly taken out of his box.

 A team did a survey of all the wood that we have and made a list. With this we know what goes where and we marked all the wood to be able to access it faster.

 Surveying the timber.

 After all our thinking of Monday we decided to first set up the back wall. And to do so we are going to fix together the stud of the back wall horizontally before raising it in place.

And let’s not forget an important step in our journey! The strength test for the poles.

 It’s all right, it will hold.

 Oscar Morand

Article 13 of Natural Bldg and Appropriate Tech Internship

One more big day at the Koanga Institute.

As promised here are some pictures of the solar ovens! Finally we lay all of them out in the sun!

As you can see the four stoves are all different, this had its effect on efficiency too. We all learned a lot through this process. The winner of our solar oven competition is the last one, with reflectors on three of its sides. The inner plate reached a temperature of 140°C. That’s hot! Now, the mystery, the double glassing of this same winner solar oven cracked! Hmmmmm, did it crack because of the heat? Or did it crack because of someone who was not happy about the result? Who knows!

Roasting potatoes!

Anyways potatoes are cooking for the day and it is a perfect synchronicity with our menu for today. Two teams today, one will finish the bond beam, and the other will build a rocket barbecue! Perfect with the potatoes.

Let’s begin with the rocket barbecue team which I am part of. Our brief was simple: build a barbecue, otherwise you have nothing to eat for dinner! With this powerful motivation we began to check out all the available scrap material around us and think about what we wanted to create. It needed to be efficient, this is the rocket part, and big, because there is a whole community to feed. Having this in mind we designed it.

The design, our reference point through the whole process.

Personally I like working in a team, but also I like when things go fast. I am not very patient and sometimes I found it challenging listening to everyone argue about why this and how that. BUT I realized that this is the actual learning process  I came for as part of this internship. Through this exchange of concepts, each one of us is able to express his own vision and understanding of the principles. Through this kind of conversation we can figure out what we actually understand and more importantly what we don’t, and here we learn.

So now let’s build! We have a lot of metal work to do so first…

Protection.

… we learn how to safely use the tools. It is very important to know what to do in a safe way. Especially when we use some really powerful electric tools or even more powerful an oxy-torch. These things can melt metal ! So we don’t jump on the tools and Tim explained us how to use them. I love this kind of day, where we can have a go on tools that I didn’t even know it exists. Now, Let’s go! We are prepared and focused, we know what to do and we don’t want to be hungry. Let’s build it!

Sarah welding.

Shaz using the axle grinder. Angry Ben welding.

And even more welding.

And now we can up with all the piece together and…

The G shape of our rocket barbecue is too short! No, it is not exactly true. We knew. I put this picture to symbolize the fact that even with some well thought-out design there is always some factors that we don’t include and one more time this universal law: we can always do a better job. So let’s not stick too much to our design and be flexible. Let's not be scared of changing things.

So we improved our rocket barbecue and we succeeded in finishing it on time for the event of tonight!

But before that, we forgot some people! The other group, the building team. Let’s have a look at their work. Not having spent the day with them I will try to describe what they did at my best. The first step was to finish the box to pour the concrete. Once the box was in place they set up a layer of plastic inside for the concrete not to leak from the sides.

Finished box with the plastic.

Next step was to put in place the rebar. A little problem happened, the rebar was too small, so they had to readjust it quite a few times before having it inside.

The rebar in the box.

Now is time to begin with the concrete. I have just asked the building team and they reckon that 2 cubic meters of concrete went into the creation of the bond beam, more or less 25 wheelbarrows full.

 Tom and Dehlila, the younger generation, working together.

 Thanks heaps to the building team for their incredible work!

A happy team.

Big lesson for the day was that somehow in a smaller team we are able to do bigger task. We work in a more efficient way and the communication is clearer. I really appreciate to be in a team of 4-5 to do a single task, where there will be no time when I am just standing there asking myself what to do?

And after all the work, time to eat! We used our rocket barbecue and the potatoes from the solar oven to have a feast with the whole community. After the labour, time for the celebration!

Getting ready for the party.

Oscar Morand

Article 12 of Natural Bldg and Appropriate Tech Internship 

Time for the bond beam! A team went to the workshop to set up the stirrups on the metal work and bring the rebar up to the place where we are building the sleep-outs.

Here we can see how the rebar fits into the stirrups.

The happy team moving the rebar.

Yesterday we lift up the height of our floor to be higher and for the moisture not to come into our floor. We are going to lay a layer of plastic on top of it and we don’t want to have hole into the plastic so we had to put a fine layer of sand to protect the plastic. And this layer also needs to be level. At this time of the process we didn’t have a dumpy level or laser level. What did we use? A long and straight piece of wood with a classic level on top of it and it works fine.

Big Ben and Rafa levelling the sand. We end up quite close.

To put in place the bond beam we have to create a “box” out of wood, which is going to include our steel bars coming out of our foundation. In this box we will pour concrete that will sit around the rebar. It creates the bond beam. The rebar is there to add some tensile strength, important in a place like New Zealand with earthquakes.

Tom cutting some wood to create the box.

The mix of concrete, one part cement for five parts aggregate (a mix of different sand and variable size gravels) and some water has to sit in the box. It means that the box needs to be level for the concrete to settle correctly. To do this we found out an old-fashioned but not less efficient dumpy level. I really appreciate working with this kind of tool. Good engineering, no electricity, efficient and two persons are needed. One thing that I have noticed today is that my skills are improving. The simple fact of putting a nail in a board, the nail goes fast and straight, the fear of hammering my finger has disappeared. Same things with the saw. With the help of Big Ben who taught me well I saw faster and straighter, which is not always this evident.

Checking the level of the profile and the box.

Setting up two board to create our box.

Here we can see the width of our box, it includes two steel bars coming out of the ground and the rebar will settle in.

And finally at the end of the day the truck with all the material for the concrete arrived and we are ready for tomorrow!

Cement and gravels.
Over and Out

Oscar Morand

Article 11 of Natural Bldg and Appropriate Tech Internship

Firstly a picture from yesterday of the timber after it had been stripped of all the bark.

Stripped wood.

And finally, after all this suspense, I proudly announce the opening of the solar oven competition! The sun is bright, and the solar ovens are finished. A team of people spent the whole day measuring the temperature of some bottle full of water in the oven. I don’t have all the results yet, but what I can say for having tested it is that some plates inside the oven went up to 120 °C! That’s pretty hot my friends.

Shazad and Shelly in front of their shiny solar oven, with a lot of reflectors.

Otherwise, we are still working on the foundations of our sleep-outs. Time to set up the bond beam. For this we had to bend our r-bar very precisely and the team doing this job did very good.

Here is our bended r-bar, ready to be set up.

The bond beam will be composed of concrete with a core of r-bar to provide tensile strength. We decided it would be easiest to form the r-bar frame as one piece ahead of time instead of installing piece-by-piece. The 4 square r-bar that you can see on the top needs to be joined with each other in a square pattern. For this we had to create some square stirrup ties that will hold these 4 r-bar together. We estimated having to do 24 of these squares. And to do this task, what could be better than still using some r-bar? Firstly we had to build a structure that would allow us to bend the r-bar into a good shape and then shape out 24 squares. Personally I love working with metal and it was a joy to melt and bend these pieces of r-bar.

Silus creating the square stirrup ties to hold the bond beam in place.

Part of today's task was to lay out 7 m3 of fill-in to raise the floor of our sleep-outs. A big truck came delivering all this material. We had a vibrating plate…Wait... A big truck burning fossil fuel that we ordered to bring us some material that has been mined somewhere else on earth? Having to hire a vibrating plate that smells so bad when it is running? Aren’t we doing a Natural Building Internship? What is natural about all this?

These kinds of thoughts came to me, and then, a realisation. I am not alone in this world, we are not alone. And we have to match the council's regulations. It is not good or bad, it is and that’s it. And even with all this “non-natural” (if we can call something not natural) things that we have used it is not that bad. Our carbon footprint is still way lower than any commercial building. Definitely we could do better, but this is a universal law, we can always do better. And doing this, we are aligned with the legal entities around us. Our model can be replicated without any major legal complication in the area.

The hard fill arriving.

Foundations set up, waiting to be raised, levelled and compacted.

Anyway, as I am saying (more precisely writing) we had a vibrating plate to compact the hard fill up to the desired height. How did we do that? One person on the vibrating plate, some shovelling the hard fill in the wheelbarrow, other emptying the wheelbarrow and a few people racking and pre-levelling the hard fill before that the vibrating plate passes on.

Angry Ben on the vibrating plate.

The whole team working. Vibrating plate running, wheelbarrow following the rhythm and racking all this.

Oscar Morand

Article 10 of Natural Bldg and Appropriate Tech Internship

We had a lot of rain these last days and it was such a relief to see the sun shining yesterday. Tes had the opportunity to take the seed out to dry. And here we are in autumn, heaps of harvest everywhere, and it takes quite a few hours to sort this out. Let’s not forget that all the seeds here are processed by hand!

All the seeds waiting to be looked after.

Friday we harvested almost all of the logs that we need. And Monday we went through the process of taking off the bark. All together we took out our spades and our motivation and went through with the job. It was one of those tasks where every single person is working. No one’s standing there waiting for something to do. And Yeah! 10 people working together can do amazing things. In half a day we took off all the bark from the trees, ready to be used! 

Everyone working together.

That afternoon we had time to work on our solar oven! Two out of four are finished! We will now wait for the sun to shine and the birds to sing (even if it doesn’t affect the cooking process) to bring out our oven and give it a try. I tell you, they are beautiful. I will post some pictures when the food is inside.

Another group had to work on the foundations of the building, preparing the site, reviewing the design and how it fits the council’s regulations.

The peeling process as demonstrated by Tom

And that night, rain again. And this morning, rain again. So, today we had a special session in the workshop, under the roof. And they are my favourite! There we have the opportunity to really learn some small but wondrously practical and valuable stuff. I had a lesson from Big Ben where he taught me how to sharpen chisels. I am really grateful, being able to look after our tools is so important in a possible future where the masses of obsolete products will be used up.

We started the foundation piles where there is only the bond beam, and we can get started on the wall bracing and roof. For the foundation we used some concrete at the bottom, a steel bar coming on top in the middle aligned with the walls. In the workshop, Tim lets us have a go with some of his tools. It was the very first time for me to do some welding and I found it very enjoyable!

Angry Ben having a go at the drop saw with the advice of Tim

Joseph experiencing the joy of welding.

Silus and Rafa creating the round structure that will hold the concrete around the steel bar.

After having all the bits and pieces we laid in the foundations in the holes made for it. It was a quick job, and well done. One had to mix the concrete and the other filling in the concrete and making sure that the foundations are at the right place. We used the profile to lay out a second square 90 millimetres outside the inside 10 square meters area. It defines the exact placement of where the steel bars are going to sit. These steel bars will hold the weight of our posts.

The two Bens and Simon checking the design.

Making sure the steel bars are level and at the right place.

Silus, super accurate and always a good smile with him.

Here are the foundations. 100 millimetres under the level of the strings will be our floor. Hard to imagine at the moment.

Oscar Morand

Article 9 of Natural Bldg and Appropriate Tech Internship

Big day today! Bob has finalized the designs of the two sleep-outs and now we are ready to harvest all the wood we need for them. So the program is to spend the whole day harvesting poles. We all put our rain gears, boots and gloves and we checked that the chain saw is running, two bow saws, tap measure and the checklist of the desired timber we need. And here we go! Ready for an other big day in the forest!

The whole crew ready to go! “On the road again”

We divided ourselves into teams, to get the most efficient way of working together. The markers (the one who mark the needed trees), the cutters (obviously the one with the chain saw), the measurer (rules, tap measure and a little bit of math to figure out the length of the trees) and the team I was in the muscles (the one who have to carry all this). We worked really well all together. Each one of us knowing what they have to do our aim was to clean this job in the day.

Tim making the chain saw running!

Chester and Rafa trimming and carrying the wood next to the road.

For this day we brought all our energy and good will to do the biggest amount of work possible and we did pretty well! Testosterones leaching from our body and the sounds of cracking timber surroundings us we were able to do massive amount of physical exercise.

 And we are back! We loaded the trailer twice with all the wood and we have all the poles needed for one full sleep-out and more or less half for the other one. Quiet proud of what we did it was not yet finished for the day. The timber being very fresh we put the poles on a big stump to let the sap run out of the trunks. Even if it is only for a few days it is always less moisture inside them. We are fully aware of the fact that the timber needs to be cure and without doing this process it may twist in few months or years. But it is a challenge and it is definitely be a big learning journey for all of us.

The last effort unloading the trailer.

And here we have all the work that we did today! It is a big pile of wood.

We yet have something very important to acknowledge. The trees. Thanks to them humans have been able to build roof over their heads since millennia on all the continents. Thanks to them humans have discovered and use fire. Trees are sacred. They were here before us and will be here after us.

Thank you mother earth for your gifts. Thank you trees for being present. We will make good use of your bodies. May you rest in peace.

Blessed be nature.

Oscar Morand

Article 8 of Natural Bldg and Appropriate Tech Internship

Here at Kotare Village we begin to feel the shift in season. Good-bye the warm summer and welcome at the cool autumn. But even if it is colder during the morning we had an outside class. What a good way to energize ourselves by being bare feet on the cold morning dew. Better than any coffee!

Yesterday Tom did some research about the design of our two passive solar sleep-outs on how to maximise the catchment of the sun to keep us warm during this time of the year. And he did share all his questions and answers with us this morning.

And this time it is not Tom but Tim who showed use that basics bits and pieces of a ram pump and explaining us the theory behind it. Basically it is a pump that works without electricity. It uses the energy contains in the water of a stream to pump it out of the same stream. I would advice you to do some google research at the subject because it is fascinating.

Tim drawing the mechanisms of the ram pump.

Let’s walk the talk and talk the walk! Straight after that we went into the creek to make a survey of the future ram pump. We prepared ourselves to have our feet in the water and found two different suitable spots. Having the theory fresh in the mind, it is always such a good experience to go directly on the field to see the practicality of these kind of projects.

Here is a possible spot for the ram pump.

Tim and Big Ben surveying the site.

Today we also had a sad event. It was the last day of Joanna who was here for the last seven weeks. She designed and implemented a typical urban permaculture garden as a demonstration site and an experimental site to see if it is possible to provide all the nutrients necessary for good human health in a small backyard. And just before she left we had the chance to have her present her project. She really did amazing work in the last few weeks. Thank you Jo! J

Joe presenting all her work.

 Today is also Thursday, and like every Thursday it is seed packing day! A moment where people in the village and the interns gather together around all the seeds to put them into the packets that will go to sale. 

Seed Packing around the table.

Shaked preparing some blueberry cuttings. He then soaks the cuttings into water where little pieces of willows branches have soaked overnight. The willow as a great roots hormone that will help the blueberry to send back some roots.

Oscar Morand

Article 7 of Natural Bldg and Appropriate Tech Internship

Every morning we gather in front of the classroom and have a daily check in to see if anyone has a particular issue or idea. Also, we have an opportunity to speak about how we feel from the previous day as well as what we want to see happening. It is definitely an important moment of the day as everyone listens to each other.  Personally I feel empowered by the attention of the group on each other. It definitely strengthens the bond between us while improving the community dynamics

And now to the hill! We all went to the little valley beneath the hill where we harvested the Kanuka poles that we need for our two sleep-outs. One person, in this case Chester, with the chainsaw is cutting the poles, and another person is walking around and marking the wanted poles for Chester to cut. All the others are carrying the poles through the rugged hill.

How lucky we are to have Mel, our cook, who prepared us a morning tea break that we brought with us made of some powerful nut balls to raise our energy levels! Because I tell you, it was a hell of a job (like Shelly would say with a south African accent) going up and down with these poles, and three or four of us carrying the bigger ones.

Sometimes a single and strong man can carry one pole alone!

We don’t see it but this pole is quite long and heavy, which explains Shaz’s facial expression.

In the afternoon we had a really good conversation about how to set up a toilet system that could be approved by the council. Even though I personally live in Switzerland where the regulations are different, it is so interesting to speak about this “taboo” subject and actually see all the different ideas and systems that can be used to recycle our “organic human by-products” without using the massive amount of water that is currently used in most developed areas. And after theory, practice! We went to empty the composting toilet. The material coming out looks decomposed, without even a single bad smell. Ah to be humanuring!

Article Six of Natural Bldg and Appropriate Tech Internship

After having class the last whole week and a free day on Monday, we began the first day of the Building internship on Tuesday the 26^th February. And my friends, what a program we have! Heaps of things to design and create. It’s gonna be full-on!

We already began Friday with the presence of Zack (a professional builder) to do the profile of the two sleep-outs. To do the profile of a building means to locate exactly the corners of the future structure. As I said, we began Friday and finished the task today. It is a meticulous task where accuracy is our main focus. How lucky we are to have Big Ben (there are two Bens in the group) who is an accomplished builder. He taught us how to do the first profile and after that we had a go at the second one without him. We had to learn and use practical tools like hammers, saws, and tape measures, but also our brains and the well-known Pythagoras theorem to create the perfect, accurate square. I learned about this theorem in high school, and what a good feeling it is to actually use it in a practical manner.

The Building team having gotten their heads around the calculations.

Another team of three courageous students, Big Ben, Angry Ben, and Shelly accompanied by Tim went to the top of the hill to inspect the place and begin to harvest big poles for the future sleep-outs. I have not been there but after seeing their faces when they came back, it looked like an enormous task. Selecting, cutting, and pulling these poles to the desired place was a huge task.

And this last weekend on a world première at the Koanga Institute we had a special jam with:

The show, not unexpectedly, received rave reviews.

Oscar Morand

Day Five of Natural Bldg and Appropriate Tech Internship

This morning we finished our discussion about Rocket Mass Heater as a way to heat our places and why not cook at the same time on them. That is always the interesting part in designing things. Once we understand the principle we can always stack different function on one element to make it more complex and useful. We also had a discussion about human powered technology. It is amazing how much the electricity is helping use in our daily life and how we have forgot the real energy embodied into our electric system. If we had to go on a bike to generate our own electricity we would give up really fast on even using a single lamp! 

After all these enlightening conversation we want into the discovery of the biochar.  Here for some information about the biochar and it’s benefits. Because we are in the middle of an Appropriate Technology workshop we focused more on how to create a biochar stove to have our own production here on site instead of commanding it. What do we want to do to have biochar? We want some charcoal. So we need to burn the gases contained in the wood without burning the carbon structure of the wood. This process is called pyrolysis.

Tim Barker already had an experiment on creating a biochar stove but it wasn’t perfect so we improved it with all the students. Here's a picture of our final stove.

We did reach some high temperature but there was still a lot of smoke. It tells use that our design can be improve. We probably didn’t have enough air flow to burn the gases.

 Anyway here is our result, a beautiful biochar that, once activated, can be spread into the gardens. 

~Oscar Morand, 21 February 2013, Natural Building and Appropriate Technology Intern

Day Four of Natural Bldg and Appropriate Tech Internship

How do we get energy to cook are food? Gas, electricity, yes, we do use them. But most of the world does not have these facilities and what do they use? Wood! Everyday billions of people use wood to cook their food. And millions of them die also because of that, intoxication through carbon monoxide.

Two days ago we learned about solar oven, as a free and clean source of energy to prepare our daily meals. But the sun is not here everyday. What else could we have?

The answer is Rocket Stove! A rocket stove oven for example. But a rocket stove is not only about food. It is mainly about effective combustion. When a piece of wood is burning it releases gases, the smoke. The gases first are a source of pollution but secondly and most importantly they can be burned and provide us with more energy. This is the underlying principle of a rocket stove, to have a clean combustion, to burn the wood and the gases! A well designed rocket stove will not do any smoke.

After understanding the principle and patterns of what a rocket stove is we went to cob the rocket water heater that we have at the Koanga Institute. Our cob mix was mostly clay with powdered pomes and horse manure. With the cob we insulated the rocket elbow for a better efficiency. 

Here is an other article about rocket stove water heater system.

Rocket stoves can also be used to heat a big mass to provide a warm environment for a house. This is called a rocket mass heater. It works on the same principle as a kachelofen, well known in Europe in the past.

~Oscar Morand, 21 February 2013, Natural Building and Appropriate Technology Intern

Day Three of Natural Bldg and Appropriate Tech Internship

Today, we have learned the three universal laws of thermodynamics:

-       Conservation of energy

-       The disorder in the universe always increases

-      At 0 Kelvin or -273°C all molecular movement stops.

Tim Barker has also shared with us, his three universal laws:

-       It takes always more time than expected,

-       It costs always more money,

-       And we can always do a better job.

These three laws tell you that even with our Wednesday morning session we didn’t finish our solar oven! It has been a real learning lesson for me about how to work together efficiently and about not having too high of an expectation on what we are building. Anyway we are here for ten weeks so we will have the time to finish them after class.

Another interesting topic that has been brought up is the different non-electric cooling systems that one could have. Did you know that on average one third of a household electrical consumption is the cooling devises like fridges and freezers? Do we really need that many things going into a fridge? Definitely not, especially if we are seeking to decrease energy consumption in the future, where our electrical needs will need to be refocused on a more essential level. Here is a solution we came up with:

At 2 meters under ground, the average temperature is 15 degrees. So we could bring the cool of the ground through a cupboard. It is called a Natural Cold Cupboard where the air coming into a pipe through the ground is cooled (or more precisely losses its heat) by conduction and will pass through our food in the cupboard where it will cool the contents. A vent would be installed at the top of the cupboard through the ceiling and it can be painted black or have a vent to drawn the air from underground.

We also discussed evaporation and the concept of wind chill when understanding that human beings have designed an amazing range of different non-electric cooling systems before the invention of electricity and refrigeration.

Here is a picture of a cooling box.

The yellow bucket is full of water, and will absorb through the piece of tissue.  Once this is wet, the wind passing through the box will take out the heat of the water and cool the whole system.

~Oscar Morand, 20 February 2013, Natural Building and Appropriate Technology Intern

Day Two of Natural Bldg and Appropriate Tech Internship

Most efficient solar oven building competition open!!

Four different teams ready to challenge their own understanding and knowledge of thermodynamics and energy flows to first design and after building a solar oven that would have the highest inside temperature. What a day! The morning we had a quick recap of the previous day and like very often, the recap takes longer than expected. Beginning to work on our creation of the day - at 11am we were quiet concerned about having the time to finish. And we did not finish… So we have until Wednesday morning to do the work.

Anyway it was an amazing day. Diving all together deep into our knowledge and sharing our skills with each other in our teams; we ended up with four different designs. We were and still are full of questions to try to improve the efficiency of our solar oven. Is it totally sealed? What are our thermal bridges? Which materials would provide the best insulation? Which material would be strong enough for the frame without being too conductive?

The principle of the solar oven is to harvest the energy of the sun to cook food. We have all experienced the power of a single lens being able to conduct the sun waves of the whole surface of the lens into a single spot and what happens? Fire! What a powerful energy that we live in. At every single second the earth is bathed by this amazing amount of energy.  Let’s go back to our teams. Our designs are quiet different, but the principles and patterns are the same :

-       focus and optimise the energy of the sun on the food.

-       seal and insulate the container to keep the heat inside.

So here we are, still thinking about all how to improve our solar oven for tomorrow and co-create a beautiful peace of art that will also function as an efficient way to cook our meals.

Here is the design of one team, with a big refractor to have a larger catchment area of sun directed into the box.

~Oscar Morand, 19 February 2013, Natural Building and Appropriate Technology Intern

Day One of Natural Bldg and Appropriate Tech Internship

Here we begin, day one of the first Autumn Internship or the Appropriate Technology and Natural Building Internship! Ten fresh students who are going to spend 15 weeks at the Koanga Institute situated on the land of the Kotare Village to learn more about regenerative way of living by gathering new hands-on skills based on Appropriate Technology. Appropriate Technology? Here is an article from Tim Barker posted on the Koanga Institute web site that explains what is appropriate technology. Anyway, here is a small taste of what it is based on the first day of the course.

Appropriate Technology:

-       is human centred and human scaled

-       is easily replicable and understandable

-       focu&]]> Mon, 25 Feb 2013 04:46:39 +0000 http://www.koanga.org.nz/index.php/blog/heritage-multiplying-onions-in-the-koanga-collection/

The Koanga Institute has three main growers for our Shallots and Egyptian Tree onions, Potato onions and garlic. Ourselves, plus Gail and Richard. We all wrote bits this year about what we were doing or seeing as part of our growouts and selection programs. We thought you might be interested......Every single seed line growout includes some sort of selection process, essential for keeping our seeds strong for the long haul. 

We are offering to pay you for your Goldmine Nectarine Stones, Blackboy Peach Stones, and stones of all other Koanga Peach, Nectarine, and Apricot varieties or any other special old trees that you may know of! Please contact us if you have stones!!! 

Permaculture was born in the 70s as part of the ferment and questioning of the times  - why can't we do something better?  Many were seeing what is obvious now, that modern industrial society is in serious trouble, and this is increasingly impacting our environment and our lives.  Much energy was dedicated either to participating in industrial growth culture or protesting against it.

Permaculture presented an alternative path – the idea that we can consciously design our lives and environments to provide for all our needs while actually enhancing the environment every step of the way. Permaculture is a thus design system for human ecologies.

While it was mainly the counter culture who heard the message in the 1970s, now permaculture is being taken up by an increasing number of ordinary people who understand the gravity of our situation, and who are looking for answers:
    for themselves
    for their families
    for their communities

We are on the cusp of major change, and we are challenged to design a different way forward.  In permaculture you will find optimism and positive results on the ground.

This is not a time for denial or despair, this is a time for commitment and disciplined action.  Permaculture is a powerful movement bringing forward hope, and the central core of the movement sits within the Permaculture Design Certificate Course.

Why the Koanga Institute's Permaculture Design Course
The design courses have largely stayed out of mainstream educational institutions, rather than be co-opted by them. The strength of this is that the radical message that permaculture founders Bill and David brought forward is remains pure and clear.

One weakness of this path is that that these courses have been developed in many different directions with many different emphases and the incorporation of many different belief systems. In some cases these emphases have diluted the core focus on permaculture as a practical design system.  A core principle of our courses is that we teach the 'system' and let people use it within the context of their personal beliefs.

Further to this I have observed over the last 25 years  that it becomes very easy for 'Permaculture' to focus on popular strategies and techniques that are used, rather than the system that drives the integrated use of these strategies and techniques.  Thus a major component and point of difference of our design course is that our focus is on having our students leave with a thorough understanding and experience of the design system that Permaculture is.

Yes, we will take you through the international curriculum and the common strategies that Permaculture employs, and we will introduce you to some of the techniques, but our focus will be to have you incorporate the paradigm of permaculture design into your being.  Whether this be as a gardener, a farmer, a builder, an engineer, a community development worker or any field of environmental management.

We pride ourselves on the thought and concentration we have put into the structure of our course to empower you to be a designer in your everyday life, as an individual or as a team member.  We are proud of how we integrate the core permaculture curriculum with thorough individualised mentorship through every step of the design process.  It is possible to leave a permaculture design course with a taste of the theory and practice but with many gaps remaining to be filled.  You leave a Koanga Permaculture Design course having completed a full-scale real design project for real clients with detailed step-by-step guidance through the whole process.

If you want personal confirmation of this, we are happy to give you the contacts of several people as references who will share their experience of our process.

Come prepared to have a life changing course, that will engage you in the world of regeneration of our environment and our communities.

Bob Corker - Director of Koanga Institute  (PRI NZ) Permaculture Design Course

Koanga Permaculture Design Courses 2013: February 3-15, September 1-13. Book now to ensure your early bird discount.

The season has been late but it’s all on now, the garden is looking luxuriant and magical! No pest or disease problems, although lots of life early in the morning before the sun gets hot, and the summer flowers all coming out. I showed Elanor a monarch butterfly yesterday on the Sunset Cosmos, her first!

Some of you, having looked at the title may be going ”uh oh“, some may be going “great something about buddhism“ still others may be going “whats he going on about?”. This story is for everybody. I don’t know much about Buddhism except that as religions go, it seems pretty balanced. In the area we used to live, the kids did buddhist studies at school and a lot of what came home seemed to sit well with how we, as a family lived. Getting back to my knowledge of buddhism, as I said  its pretty thin, except that the term “walking the middle path“ which is a central concept of Buddhism, just so happens to pretty much perfectly sum up my personal philosophy on dealing with the challenges in my life and the changes afoot in the wider world. Now don’t get confused and think I follow the Buddhist middle path, but that simply the term fits well with how I think and that certainly my middle path and that of Buddhism are ultimately about balance, self honesty and a healthy dose of critical thinking.

Now those that know me will know that  one of my central themes is not falling in love with any one idea or fix, as “The solution”. I think its a trap when we identify with, or are identified with, an idea, a movement, or a technology so strongly that we are trapped within that frame of reference and so miss other ideas or solutions other than those we are familiar with. Having said that, its why I identify so strongly with the permaculture movement. Without going too far into it, to me the strength of permaculture and the very fact that can make it so maddening to try and describe it to others, is its vigorous adoption of new ideas without diluting its core concepts. Its not an idea so much as an idea about how to arrange ideas. Confused ? Me too. I did say its maddening. Think of it this way, permaculture is both a bookshelf and the system of how we arrange the books on that bookshelf, its not the books themselves. So on our bookshelf called Permaculture we have such titles as, organic gardening, biodynamics, solar passive design, composting, holistic management etc etc etc. As new titles become available and/or we have new updated editions of our existing books, our library grows. As our library grows we begin to rearrange where we place our books on the shelves as the information contained within links with and forms synergies with our other titles. What is not Permaculture is when the authors or fans of a particular book insist that it’s the bookshelf, or at least the most important book in the bookshelf. As a permaculturist (or a follower of the middle path) I’m pretty promiscuous. I don’t care where or who the book came from. As long as it works for me it goes on the shelf with all the other books.

Anyway the trap as previously identified is falling in love with one title and constantly retracing the same familiar paths contained therein without questioning what is valid and what has merely become habit. We’re now approaching our central theme and while I’ve strayed far, I hope I’ve laid sufficient groundwork to illuminate my point.

Suppose we absolutely loved a book called  “Civilization is going to collapse and millions are going to die” or conversely a book titled “Renewable energy will allow civilization to continue on as usual” (I’d like to add at this point that the last title is a much edited and updated version of the classic “Fossil fuels are forever”).  At this juncture, I’d like to leave the whole book analogy behind as its getting pretty tiresome and I’m sure we all get the point.

The trouble with whichever story you believe is that its maddeningly difficult to predict the future and that even if you could, it completely ignores the possibility (nay probability!) of both futures and any number of variations in between unfolding simultaneously in different parts of the world. What I’d like to propose is that we take  the middle path and accept that we can’t accurately know the future beyond some very broad brush strokes (e.g Fossil fuels are running out, we’ve overshot the carrying capacity of the planet and “The Hobbit” will be a box office success) and get on with doing those things that work no matter what the future holds for us.

For example within the school of thought that says the global economy is falling apart (of which I’m one) there are two main sub groups, the deflationists and the hyperinflationists and every variation in between (who is right, I could care less). What I’m interested in is what will work no matter who is right and get out of the predicting the future game entirely. So the deflationists say money will be scarce and whoever has it can purchase what they want (cash is king) while the hyperinflationists say we will be flooded with money which will destroy its purchasing power, so load up on gold . If you choose to believe one story over the other, then you immediately expose yourself to the risk of choosing wrong. Refusing to choose one or the other is of course not the whole strategy - our next step requires us to look to the implications of both competing points of view and seeing what core issues they have in common.

As a general theme, if what you decide to do reduces your dependence on others (be they individuals or companies) for the necessities of life (food water shelter etc) then you have chosen the middle path, an action which immediately makes you more resilient to the vagaries of live no matter what they are. In fact what you will find, is that the same actions keep cropping up no matter the potential problem you are trying to circumvent .

This is why growing your own food is such a powerful act. It works and has huge benefits  whether or not the global financial system is falling apart, whether the inflationists or deflationists are right. Take our earlier example - the deflationist with his wad of cash and the hyperinflationist with his bag of gold. They both have to eat and if they are trying to buy food from someone who is also hungry, then I don’t care how much money or gold they have, they are going to be hungry. We do have to present both sides of the argument and so yes, growing food is a big commitment if you are doing it well. It also has lots of nasty side effects like increased nutrition from eating nutrient dense, toxin free food and increased flexibility from having to actually move your body, not to mention that members of your family may follow you outside from sheer curiosity and then you might actually have to talk to them instead of sitting in front of the TV watching Survivor or some such reality show. While food is a biggie, it is only one of a number of necessities in our lives that if we reduce or remove our dependence on others for, has vast benefits plus some possibly nasty side effects as previously mentioned. Where the middle path doesn’t help is if we are confused about what is essential and what is not. The trouble being, in this day and age we tend to get our wants very much mixed up with our needs and consider things like flat screen TV’s and i phones as not negotiable, a fallacy that can be quickly dispelled by a couple of days without food or having no home.

As a further example, take the typical modern house. Statistically they are getting bigger, the number of people living in them is getting less and we are spending less time in them. A thirty year mortgage paying off a $400,000 loan to get that house will keep you working for the best part of your life and see you paying much more than you borrowed. Now lets build a very modest house, small, recycled and local materials, no toxic substances like off gassing plastics, solvents or glues etc. I’ve known a few people do it for around $10,000. What would you do with all the spare time and/or money if you weren’t working to pay off in excess of $800,000 debt? You could have some nice holidays, that’s for sure! 

Now why don’t more people do this? Well? Could it be that we’ve allowed ourselves to be convinced that we deserve it? That we need to have it, that it must be this way because everybody else is doing it? Convinced that we need to work for thirty years as a slave to a bank, that if we don’t have a vast house we might actually die, that people will actually look down on us if we have a small cheap sustainable house. My advice would be send them a nice postcard from wherever you’re next holidaying, or wave at them from your tiny house with the big garden and the solar system on the roof that supplies all your energy as they head off to work .

So what would I do? Nail down the essentials, grow as much of your own food as practical, get out of debt and reduce your dependence on anyone who is providing anything to you for a profit, especially if it is considered a need. Following the middle path, consider if what you do for a living  is resilient to things like economic downturns, get involved in community. Above all, learn to think critically and don’t fall into the trap of automatically believing those things you most want to happen. 

Live life, be happy!
Cheers Tim

Kay’s 200 sq m Biointensive garden, designed to supply all the veges and grains for 2 people and to grow soil! (We’ve been giving away a lot too...)

Kumara Apple Bake

• Slices of fresh new kumara
• slices of new seasons cooking apples
• butter 
• cinnamon 
• rapadura or honey

Take a baking dish as big as you need. Make layer of sliced new kumara in the bottom of the dish, then a layer of new season’s cooking apples. Place dobs of butter over that, generously, and shake some cinnamon, as well as a little rapadura or a very little drizzled honey, then more layers of that mix again several times with butter and spices and rapadura on the top.

Bake until cooked and brown on top and serve with roast pork!

These sauce and paste recipes are very easy to make.  I added the fermented chilli because I was also making a fermented chilli sauce and I love chilli so I added some…not essential..

• tomatoes, any amount but the more you do at a time the less relative work you a recreating for yourself.    
• olive oil to fill bottles (a good reason to put sauce in narrow necked bottles and fill to neck, so that you only need a small amount of olive oil, and also it's easy to pour the sauce).
• sun-dried sea salt (1 Tbsp per litre of sieved tomato sauce).
• 1/2 cup whey (optional). The whey will just determine the type of fermentation microbes; it is fine without, but whey will make it a lactic ferment.
• wine bottles or other bottles (do not need tight lids, so you could use a cloth tied over the top if desired).
• plastic or wooden bucket (not metal!).
• ground black pepper to taste.
• a little dried or fermented chilli or other herbs.

Place tomatoes into fermenting bucket, mash and squish with hands until a reasonable consistency is achieved leaving 10cm of free room at the top of bucket, add whey if you choose to use it . Place a cloth tightly over the top to keep out all bugs. Stir twice daily, squishing well.

When the fermentation has stopped (no more bubbling or frothing - usually about a week, but sometimes more depending on temperature at the time), put the resulting tomato through a juicer , or seive, or processor of some sort to remove all skins and seeds. Add salt and other dried spices herbs if you wish (if you wish to add fresh herbs, they must be added at the beginning so they go through the fermentation process). Pour into bottles and cover with 2cm of olive oil in the top of each bottle neck. Cover loosely and store in a cool place. The only thing that can go wrong is if you bottle the sauce before it has completely finished the fermentation process, in which case it will continue fermenting in the bottles and the olive oil will spill over and make a mess. If this happens I suggest you pour it all out again, leave to ferment longer,  then bottle again and add oil.

This will keep for over a year. Ours is 1 year old and showing no signs of going 'off' or being different in anyway...

I was initially very nervous about how this would taste but I have to say it tastes very good. The complex flavours of the tomato come out with the fermentation process and there is absolutely no need for sugar or vinegar, it is all there.

To thicken your sauce up to a solid paste consistency, simply strain the sauce through a breathable cloth until desired thickness is achieved. I use a fine wine straining bag from the home brew shop (I use these bags for lots of things, including straining the honey from the wax). Whatever you use must have fine holes or it will all fall through and you will be left with nothing. To make tomato puree just keep an eye on the process and remove and bottle at the desired thickness. I hang my dripping bag from the clothes line (cover with a towel to stop fruitflies landing on it) and keep it in the wind to encourage it to thicken/drain fast. Add the salt after hanging, and desired consistency is achieved. Check salt levels you may wish to add more as the tomato is more far more concentrated.

A Word of warning: If you are going to add this tomato sauce to your cooking, remember that it has already been salted. Bought tomato puree is never salted and I found myself adding salt before tasting and making thngs way too salty to begin with; I've got it sussed now.

This recipe was taken from Preserving Food Without Freezing or Canning by the Gardeners and Farmers of Terre Vivant! with much extra information from our own experiences.

The other exciting thing this week has been the sun!! The sun came out for an entire week, and my summer garden began to grow. It was pretty depressing seeing the tomatoes, peppers, eggplants, okra, and even the pumpkins just sitting there looking aweful at the end of November. I just kept thinking of the endless rain and cool weather we had last summer, and even planted extra daikon, beetroot, carrots and lettuce- which all do well in cool summers  and winter just in case!! We've been blessed with rain, as well as sun, so things are really starting to take off.

I’m going to have another talk to Richard Watson, one of our seed growers, who lives in Amuri where it is a very long, cold winter and check out his greenhouse design. I’ll see if he will write something for us about his amazing greenhouse as well. Our house plans are about to go to council and I don’t need more convincing that a small greenhouse attatched to the house, for food production in adverse growing conditions, is a must.

On December 1^st, I’m going to begin weighing everything that comes out of my garden again to determine it’s value, so I can keep real about garden economics; what comes out, for what goes in.

Last season, the first year of this garden, we saw that even when we bought all the fertilser and foliar sprays, we were able to cover all the costs of setting up the garden with the value of our Summer crop, which made our winter veges free. I’m hoping that this year, as we have added more biochar and fertiliser, we will come out far better off and that next season, when we should not be buying any inputs, the figures could  be astounding!

Right now, we’re eating: Southland sno peas, Odells, and Lightheart Lettuces, Cylindrical beetroot, Welsh Bunching onions, Multiplying Chives, Tic beans, Puha, Lamb’s Quarters, and we’re hanging out for courgettes and summer crops.

I harvested our Early White Rocombole garlic and it’s drying and will be ready to eat next week…this garlic is incredible, it tastes great, you get to eat the flower heads, it keeps well and it’s ready 6 weeks earlier than most other garlic… we’ll have lots for sale this year. Perfect for selling at a Farmers Market, just before Xmas to get top prices!

My hulless oats and barley are almost ready to harvest along with the  Essene Flaxseed

My great Aunty Nellie’s rose at my gate is flowering

The NZ heritage sweet peas are flowering

My Flour peas are flowering, they have small bi colour pink flowers and enormous tendrils which make then easy to hold up, they don’t need much support because they hold each other up!!

Right now, I’m planting... basil (it’s hard to go past Genovese for pure ease of growing and huge production and also flavour), it will finally take off, and succession crops of green beans, (King of The Blues or Purple Pod, Emu, America, and Yellow Pole are all excellent choices), lettuce (Tree Lettuce is an excellent summer cultivar, you'll need to become a member to purchase, as Tree Lettuce is part of our institute range.) I'm also planting Finger lettuce, and Lightheart, available in the Garden's range. I’m planting daikon of both the long white sort (Tokinashi) and Aomaru Koshun, the round one with a green shoulder and bright pink mandala insides which we all love raw, cooked and pickled. I’m making sure all my summer vege companion flowers are all in: Morning Glory, Chromosia zinnia, Sunset cosmos, all cosmos actually, Marigolds, Love Lies bleeding… all those colourful South American flowers that love growing with the South American vegetables. I’m also putting in sunflowers; have you tried Lion's mane, an old Dalmatian gumdigger cultivar? It’s an outstanding variety I have never ever seen available in any other catalogue world wide, or Evening Sun another outstanding cultivar with multi headed sunset coloured heads. Also, Giant Russian, always a favourite, is grown by Richard Watson and selected for tall stems that do not blow over in a gale, as well as large flowers and seeds s they are quite special too.

Oh, and if you didn’t get tomatoes in, then it’s not too late to plant Henry Harrington’s Dwarf Bush Cherry, which can be grown in pots or in the garden; they crop fast and taste excellent.

• Things are ramping up in the garden, we are harvesting Market Wonder beans, Crookneck courgettes, many kinds of lettuces, Cylindrical and Golden beetroot, pickling and eatingDalmatian cabbage, our first Delicata squash, and our first Zimbabwe squash.
• The grains look outstanding, and this week I made a bamboo frame to hold a cover over theProso Millet, and another over the Sumire Mochi hulless barley.
• We fertilsed and mulched the bed we are going to plant as a serious perennial vegetable and herb bed. I’m going really hard to keep this garden small and super productive. I’m only going to choose perennials that need composting and mulching once a year, and that I know I will actually eat as an importamt part of our diet! We used our fertilser mix that we have found to be best in most soils, and where there is no high quality compost available. A short term solution but a good one. 400 gms EF:Nature’s Garden per sq m, 200 gms EF:Active Calciumsq m, 500 gms EF:Activated Carbon and 500 gms EF:Paramagnetic Rock Dust, and water plants in with liquid EF:FishPlus.
• Our first compost heaps were made of sods from the garden paths( with the grass and grass roots all in them) and thistles, as that was all we had. We are now making proper Biointensive heaps, using scythed hay, thistles, weeds, kitchen scraps and ashes and charcoal from the bath, burnt bones and animal waste, including fish waste from our river (mullet)
• When I took my refractometer tests last week I noticed that the plants with the highest brix’s were the legumes. That makes me wonder if nitrogen is the limiting factor and so I have applied a foliar spray of EF:FishPlus to see if all the other brix’s come up.

In the summer heavy feeders carbon crop section I planted Blue Aztec sweet corn, because I like the way it tastes and also the way it grows, It tends to have multi stems and lots of cobs. I'm also planting Rainbow Inca seed for my next succession  which will be two weeks after the Blue Aztec. I only tend to eat the old types of sweet corn these days, I find them far more satisfying.

Sweetcorn and hulless barley and oats make up this 1/4 of my garden, grown for the carbon content of their  stems for making high quality compost and the other 1/4 that is there to produce carbon for the compost is in Tic beans. When grown to the dry stage they produce excellent carbon as well  as an edible crop.

I have put a significant area of my perennial vege garden into White Scotch runner beans which we will eat green, as shell out beans  and as dried beans.

We have great crop of peas coming on, Southland Sno. Flour peas for drying, Capucyners for drying Dalmatiian peas for drying and Haverlock Sugar snaps for eating along with the Southland son. Our Tic beans are holding huge crops they also will become a dried crop that will be winter soup and bean staples. Our potatoes are looking good after being touched by about 3 late frosts; the yams are just peeking up and the jerusalem artichokes are looking good. I'm going to try some special chick peas, and aduki beans that were found in an ethnic auckland market by a friend earlier this year for interest and also Cherokee beans in my corn patch.

I'm planting my flower seeds now, I love the summer flowers that are the vege garden companions and somehow they always seem too go in later than the vege because I get around to them after all the vegetables go in. I'm also enjoying the cottage garden flowersright now, my old roses and our heritage poppies and cornflower and larkspur are all about to burst into bloom.

We’ve had very hot days and very cold days, lots of Spring equinox winds and very calm days too, things are moving in the garden.

• My purple sprouting broccoli is producing heads which is very exciting for me because I have never lived in an area I could grow this crop before. They do grow but a warm winter means no heads, the planst just get bigger and bigger and bigger. All parts of the plant are edible, and I love it.
• It is also great to see the perennial runner beans ( Phaseolus coccineus)  coming up again this spring. I have not grown perennial beans in my own garden before, and I’ve definateley decided that Runner beans are one of my favourite perennial vegetables.  They prefer the spring and autumn seasons and produce green beans before annual runner beans do so that is great plus they produce shellout ad dry beans that make great salads and soup.

I tested the brix of our oats that were grown as a winter carbon crop and it was 28! The highest I have ever seen, so I'm very happy to know that the compost I make with them is being made with high brix ingredients. Our compost heaps are being made with oats, tic beans, lupins , burnt bone and shell ash, seaweed meal, wood ash, iodine, chicken manure from our chicken house, biochar, a little cow manure slurry from our cows, some garden soil and some Compost Minerals and Microbes to encourage the brix up as far as possible.

I have all the quarters of the summer garden planned out, and I’m praying for a summer this year.

My heavy feeders quarter will contain

•  10m of tomatoes, I’ll be making loads of paste and dried tomatoes
•  5m of paprika peppers that will double as fresh sweet capsicums and well as for drying to make paprika which we use a lot of. I’m saving seed for the Institute so can’t plant other varieties however I’ll be trading with the Institute for hot peppers  too.
•  5m of eggplants,
•  3m of crookneck squash
•  7m of Delicata squash
•  5m of Buttercup squash  
•  5m of Chucks Winter
•  5m of rock melons ( I love them fresh and dried)
  plus basil, tampala, magenta spreen , super nutritious summer greens and a cucumber or two

My heavy feeding carbon crops quarter will contain Blue Aztec Sweet corn, followed by Rainbow Inca sweet corn, and maybe a third planting of  Silver Platinum for variety!

My light feeding carbon quarter is planted in hulless oats, hulless barley and Tic beans.

My last quarter containing the legumes and root vege contains

• 10m of  tall peas mostly for drying Dalmatian, Capucyjner, and fLour peas but a few Havelock sugar peas as well
• 10m containing carrots, beetroot, scorzonera, Ohno Scarlett turnips
• 5m of potatoes
• 5m of yams and Jerusalem artichokes
• 20m of beans for drying Mother In Law and Dalmatian Peans

Kumara don’t do well in double dug beds so I’m establishing a special kumara patch this year.
We are also establishing an isolation garden this spring for the Koanga Institute down on Thorny Croft, where we will grow our field corn for tortillas and the chickens, and also hulless pumpkin seeds and  a few other goodies we’ll talk about later.

I have enough of my own compost ready to apply to all of my heavy feeding crops, this spring so that is a major step forward for a new garden. Next spring I should have enough compost ready to use on all beds.

Big changes in my garden in the past few weeks,

• the over wintered carbon crops lupins, oats, flaxseed, barley and tic beans are all heading up to seed and looking strong. Once again the brix of the oats is very high and we will have a lot of high quality compost material.
• the compost we made last autumn is ready so we are going to be able to compost all of the beds in the heavy feeders section of the garden this spring which is a great start. By this time next year we will have compost for all beds every time we plant.
• I planted our early peas, Southland Sno, WF Massey as well as Dalmatian peas for drying, Capucyners for drying and Flour peas for drying to make tempura batter. The legume rootcrop section of the garden also has had beetroot and carrots planted as well as potatoes.
• Our potatoes have gone in following our own advice, l have also planted some in worm farm boxes so I can compare the crops when they are grown vertically. Wechose varieties that clearly look as thought they would produce tubers up their long tops. Karoro, taranaki, Whataroa Urenika, some of the very old varieties.   Click here to read potato planting advice.
• we have transplanted our early spring grains for the summer light feeding carbon beds, we will also harvest these grains. So far we've planted hulless barley and hulless oats.
• we have loads of great greens now, my favourites are the French sorrel and the endives, which we eat daily in omelette or scrambled egg.
• planning the heavy feeder section of the garden is always hard because this is always where our favourites go. how to keep them to ¼ of the garden area so we can maintain our crop rotation is  the challenge
• I planted all my tomato seed, eggplant seed and pepper seed. I have to choose carefully so that I compliment the Institute seed gardens, ie we grow different varieties for seed. My tomatoes this season will be Island bay and riverside, two varieties I am super impressed with, both for eating fresh and also processing.
• My peppers will be Yugoslav paprika , and Hungarian hot wax. Peppers cross so I am restricted because I will be saving seed. I would normally always plant sweet chocolate as well, an outstanding sweet pepper that is easy to grow.
• My pumpkin seed is also planted delicata, henry heritage buttercup and chucks winter.

Spring is well and truly here! we are all a little scared to feel and acknowledge it after the past 8 months of rain! It is sunny and warm, chicken pumping out eggs, muscovies beginning to nest, along with the Weeder Geese, and bees humming.

Lots of preparation for Spring now, beginning to remove lupins and tic beans for compost so we can plant early Spring crops.

• We spread our first compost heap made in this garden onto the beds that will be planted with pumpkins and heavy feeders, and we are beginning a new compost pile with our over wintering carbon crops. It will be 2 months before they are all out, and that compost heap complete. We burned our bones that have accumulated in the bone barrel over winter so we have calcium to add to the compost heap. I’ll see if we can collect seaweed for this heap as well, otherwise I’ll add seaweed meal. I’ll also continue to add our compost Minerals and Microbes into my compost for another year I think, to ensure we get our brix’s up as fast as possible.
• I’m removing Tic beans from our asparagus bed in preparation for planting our asparagus. The little plants I grew last year are just beginning to move so it’s time.
• I’m transplanting my last lot of brassicas into the heavy feeding section of the winter garden...after  this planting, that section of my garden will become the summer roots and legumes section  ( for more details and info on garden crop rotation see page 141 of the Koanga Garden Guide.)
• I’m transplanting WF Massey dwarf peas and Southland Sno peas  into the legume/rootcrop section of the winter garden, the last crops that will go in that area before the rotation happens and it becomes a summer carbon crop section. I’m also transplanting beetroot seedlings and direct sowing carrot and turnip seed.
• I’m organized now with my propagation cloche for seedling production (don’t have a green house yet in my new garden area). Basically I’m using a wooden bench built from old pallets with a plastic sheet over hoops to make a cloche.  
• I’m doing lots of planning, so I get my summer garden how I want it. This garden provides our food year round so careful panning is essential to ensure we have the right amounts of the right crops, and varieties  for storage drying fermenting etc . This is the time get  very clear about which variety you want of everything, which potatoes, which tomatoes, which peppers, etc etc. They all have different purposes, have all been selected for different qualities and characteristics. Read our catalogue or website to ensure you get seeds that are going to match your needs as well as having been selected to do well in this land in organic conditions. That is what Koanga seed is all about. There is no other seed company in NZ doing that. All other seed companies are buying over 90% of their seed from industrial seed companies overseas.
• I’m about to plant my heritage berry patch. I’m very excited about that because i have never lived in a place I could grow gooseberries, currants  and Worcester berries before, although raspberries and cranberries and blueberries fruit everywhere in NZ. I’m planting 20sq m of bio intensive berry beds; 2 blackcurrants, 2 red currants, 2 white currants, 2 Worcester berries, 2 Pouto blackberries, 3 Chilean cranberries, 2 yellow raspberries, 2 red raspberries, all from our heritage berry collection. Many of these berries will be available this next winter in our Koanga Fruit Tree range, available from the Koanga Institute nursery here, from Edible gardens and from Kaiwaka Organics in Kaiwaka. Our blueberries will be from a community blueberry garden, so they can all be managed together and we can get to know them. We have a large NZ heritage blueberry collection here now.
• I have 200m of Biointensive garden  ¼ of the garden e will be heavy feeders tomatoes and basil 10m, peppers and eggplants 10m roc melons, cucumber Tampala and Magenta Spreen 10m, pumpkins 20m. ¼ of the garden  will be in roots and legumes 10m green beans, carrots and beetroot, 10m in yams, artichokes salsify and scorzonera, ¼ of the garden will be in light feeding carbon crops  hulless oats 20m, 10m hulless barley, 20m millet,
•  ¼ garden will be in heavy feeding carbon crops  50m Rainbow Inca sweet corn (enough that we can also save the seed for the Institute)
•   I’m making ferments with all my excess over wintered root crops. my favourite ferment is a mix of all of them, beetroot, daikon, carrot, onion or welsh bunching onions, a little garlic etc for this recipe click here

This past week in my garden has been about the orchard. We’ve planted our entire orchard consisting of around 20 of our favourite fruit trees plus a small berry patch. My goal is to produce quality rather than quantity although I’m sure there will very soon be far more than we can eat. With grand children next door I’m sure that won’t be a problem!

I’ve followed my own instructions, and chosen trees that will produce year round, with plenty for drying and cooking etc. All are heritage varieties which we need for the nutrition. it’s all about upping our mineral and vitamin intake along with all the other goodies  that go with heritage genetics, and a minerally balanced, microbially rich soil. More and more evidence comes through everyday to show us that our health depends upon these things.

I have planted the trees at 6m diagonal spacings, to allow for planting a range of legumes around the trees with the aim of providing not only nitrogen for the fruit trees but also fats and proteins for the chickens via their seed, and also so that i can chop and drop them  (the legumes) on a regular basis, to encourage and grow a food forest type mulch which will also encourage bugs and microbes which I turn will provide high quality feed for chickens and ducks.

I’m one of those people that is very careful to prune my fruit trees back down so that they branch very low to the ground. I like the children to be able to climb into the trees to get the fruit and I also like to be able to prune the trees from the ground and also actually pick the fruit without a ladder! many trees we buy are grown to branch 1m from the ground which in my opinion is way too high. They have been grown for tractor maintenance and I don’t use a tractor! It just takes a little courage to cut them back down low.. say 30cm above the ground…. and then they will branch low and I can manage them from there, keeping them low as they grow.

This has also felt like the new season in the vege garden too, I’m planting loads of early spring vegetables, carrots, beetroot, lettuce, broccoli, Broadbeans, peas, onions Tic beans , spring is just around the corner!!!

It’s mid-Winter here right now and the garden has slowed right down, taking a big breath. There is a load of food in the garden, and not much work in the garden for a few weeks yet. Winter here is a lot colder and far more frosts than Northland!

We are eating a huge range of winter salad greens, endive, Winter lettuce, Joe’s lettuce, Miner’s lettuce, parsley, coriander, fennel, corn salad, spinach. We’re also eating a range of carrots, beetroot, Aomaru Koshun daikon turnips both Ohno Red and Henry’s White, plus loads of ferments made in the Autumn. And of course all the stored potatoes, kumara, pumpkins and Jerusalem artichokes. Although it was a terrible summer we are certainly not going hungry!

This is the first year in ages that we have our chickens hard out laying by early July. It has been hard looking after them well whilst shifting around so much but we got it sorted this year! We have been feeding them a little seaweed meal and chicken minerals everyday and they only took 3-6 weeks to moult. Their bright colours are back again and they are back onto the lay. We have Golden Wyandottes, and they are such beautiful birds. Their eggs aren’t as large as the Leghorns but they go clucky and hatch our replacements and fatten up well for a roast!

Over the next few weeks we will be planting our orchard. The fruit trees will go in at quite wide spacings (6m) so that we have plenty of room for all the legumes in early Spring. Our intention is that in addition to our orchard providing fruit for us, it will also provide as many seeds and sources of protein as possible for the chickens. We want to get off the ‘buying grains’ treadmill as fast as we can. We have worm farms, where we grow worms for the chickens which are fed our own cow manure, and that has proved very successful so we are going to increase the size of that operation to provide the bulk of the chickens winter protein while the comfrey is dormant.

Keeping in mind it is still raining daily here, all night last night, and we are gardening in wetlands, on free draining pumice soils! We are eating:

• Havelock Sugar peas
• Daikon, (as we have been all summer!)
• Juwarot carrots (very good carrots)
• Golden Beetroot and Bulls Blood beetroot
• Bloomsdale Spinach
• Odell's lettuce
• Welsh Bunching onions
• Salsify
• Scorzonera
• Red Kuri and Delicata pumpkins
• Stored California Red and Pukekohe Long Keeper onions
• stored kumara and potatoes
• Dalmatian cabbage
• Land Cress
• White Icicle radishes

So for all the wet cloudy weather we are not starving! The cow is still giving milk, but the chickens have stopped laying now, however it is time to eat the fat geese and ducks in the paddock.

All four quarters of our garden is are planted up in their winter crops, except the final beds that are being planted in Tic beans and broad beans for spring eating. One section in heavy feeders for Winter, early Spring eating (brassicas, salad greens celery fennel etc), one in legumes (peas, broad beans and Tic beans) and root crops (carrots, daikon, beetroot radish, salsify, scorzonera), another in grains for carbon and eating, the other in leguminous carbon crops also for eating and compost. Because of all the rain and full moon over the past week we did a solid fertilise over all beds with 100g of EF:Nature’sGarden per sqm. We also did a foliar feed of EF:GrowthFoliar. Things are still growing and the brix’s are around 10. I’m so looking forward to being able to use my own mineralised compost in Spring.

This Winter we will be fencing our house site, planting the orchard/food forest, and designing and building our animal systems so that we can move the chickens from their current site where they are clearing a patch which we will plant alfalfa next Spring.

I’m looking forward to the quieter energy of winter, a time to reflect and plan, read learn research etc.

We are eating a great range of vege right now. Aomaru Koshun daikon are my favourite, raw, cooked or fermented! Golden beetroot, landcress, carrots of many colours, Havelock North Sugar Snap peas, heritage potatoes, kumara and pumpkins from storage, and fermented tomato paste put aside, lettuce, chives, onions both red and brown plus Welsh Bunching Onions, leeks and herbs. … I’m happy! Together with our own local fermented vegetables (my favourite is the recipe above at this time of the year), meat, fat, bones for broth, eggs and milk for kefir and feta, we are almost spending nothing at the shop at all.

We are just now finishing double digging the last 30m of our vegetable garden. That will make it 200sq m and we will then have it in a clear rotation with 50m in each section. This winter we have:

• 50m of carbon crops, Oats and vetch and hulless barley..
• 50sqm of legumes planted as carbon crops mainly lupins and Tic beans
• 50sq m of legumes and root crops for eating over the winter and early spring we have daikon (Aomaru Koshun), carrots (Benhorn), beetroot (Bull’s Blood and Golden), radish (White Icicle), salsify, scorzonera and shellout peas WF:Massey, and Havelock Sugar Snap peas and Tic beans.
• The forth 50sq m is in winter heavy feeders such as Dalmatian cabbage, cauliflower, broccoli purple sprouting, savoy cabbage, and a host of other greens like corn salad, miners lettuce, Florence Fennel, Dalmatian parsley, coriander, Bloomsdale spinach, winter lettuce, puha, dandelion and more. The garlic is about to go into this section along with shallots tree onions and Pukekohe Long keepers a little later.

I have worked out carefully the cost of fertilising this 200sq m garden for the first six months. The details of how this was made up will be in our next catalogue. The cost was $6.36 per sq m including GST and all solid and liquid applications and including the Compost Minerals and Microbes and Seaweed Meal that went in the three compost heaps we made whilst developing the garden.

That is a total of: $1272!    (plus $100 worth of seed, makes it $1372)

It took only three months before we began getting a serious return from this garden (because we did such a good job of the soil preparation) and so there were only three months when we would have needed to be buying vegetables in the shops whilst also investing in the garden.

Only ½ of the garden needed to be developed to have begun getting a return, so that means in order to develop a garden similar to this you would need around $500 plus a garden hose, spade,fork, watering can and Niwashi and hula hoe or similar. If you buy top quality gear that will cost around $300 -$400.

A total investment of around $800 - $900 in your families health! How much do you value nutrient dense food, soil health and the health of your family?

For the next 6 months it will cost a lot less, and the costs will continue to decrease, in relation to me putting energy into building great compost. I will continue to keep you in touch.

PS. The prices I am using are the full retail prices Koanga Gardens sells it’s products for including GST but not including freight as I have none to pay. Most of you would which will increase the costs.

I'm still going on about the need to seriously plan for resilience in our gardens. Would you survive through to next Spring on the produce you harvested from your garden this Autumn? What do you think you need to learn to get it better next season?

• I'm going to try harder to get my Brix levels up. I'm going to plant a wider range of crops, my favourites but also those I know will perform in adverse conditions.

• Because of the cold Spring up north our kumara tupu went in very late, and then the lack of sun this Summer has meant another disaster of a crop. Potatoes liked the conditions though, so they did well.

• Queen of the Blues Beans are still going, very impressed!

•  Aomaru Koshun Daikon have been the outstanding star of our summer garden with their ease of growing, speed of maturity, incredible taste raw and cooked, and their looks!

• I'm planting my winter garden full on now 10m of hulless barley for seed to eat as a grain and also as a carbon crop, 2x 10m beds of oats and vetch as carbon crops and 2x 10m beds in Tic Beans as a carbon crop (which I also get to harvest from).

• In the next section of the garden I'm planting carbon and compost crops 2x 10m of lupins, 2x 10m of oats and 10m of rye.

• The next section are legumes and root crops. I have Tic Beans, broad beans, lots of peas, beetroot, carrots, daikon, salsify, scorzonera and turnips.

• In the heavy feeder section I have a huge range of brassicas and greens, a little of everything in the catalogue, to make for different salad or greens every night if we feel like it!

Winter brassicas with Balta Balensa clover as a nitrogen fixing winter ground cover.

Morning Glory Crimson rambler is stunning at this time of the the year once the beans die back.

Peas, carrots, beetroot turnips, daikon, salsify and scorzonera ready for winter and kumara and potatoes about to come out.

No pics this week, my camera is broken and it’s raining anyway!

My February value of vegetables harvested was $401 ! This was very low because of such big crop failures associated with the rain and no sun etc...see below… however it is still a huge saving on the grocery bill, and we have almost paid off the cost of putting the garden in after 16 weeks since digging the beds. This summer has been a huge wake up call…… this would have bee n a starvation year 200 years ago. We need to learn from the failures and successes of this season.

My two biggest lessons have been:

1. That high brix crops are far more likely to perform well, handle the extreme climate conditions because they have complete sugars complete proteins and fats and essential oils for protection .. lots more about this in our July 2012 catalogue.
2. We need to pay far more attention to which crops are most likely to do well in our area and choose a range that are likely to perform over all

In my garden I had:

• A rock melon failure, around 100 melons rotting days before potential ripening due to lack of sun
• Very few ripe peppers due to lack of sun
• Not sure if long keeping pumpkins will mature and keep well at all due to lack of sun
• Eggplants no fruit at all due to lack of sun
• Mid/late season corn not ripening de to lack of sun, and too much rain
• I’m too scared to harvest the kumara because they have basically had no sun since planting, will let you know next month what happens there....

I also had:

• 220 Zimbabwe squash harvested from 5 sq m of garden bed! with vines going up ti- pees so no extra area was used
• 30 kgs of Crookneck squash (courgettes) harvested from 2 plants
• 40 Delicata squash from 2sq m of bed
• Dalmatian Peans; excellent result
• Potatoes and tomatoes ( that survived a neighbour’s spray drift) excellent result due high brix plants and using EF:Bio pesticide I’m sure. After all this rain we have no blight in potatoes and the tops are still actively growing and the crops getting heavier . ( The EF:Biopesticide only seems to need very few applications in these wet conditions)
• 5kgs of Proso millet from 2 sq m of bed
• Sinton dried beans cropped at .6 kgs per sq m. I know that will be way more next time,.. they were transplanted too late from their trays…. but they are all 100% perfect no marks from the wet etc
• My Mother In Law Beans also cropped at .6 kgs per sq m, but they didn’t like the wet, their pods are thinner and many beans were marked and not edible.
• If you also had unusual experiences this summer please email us and let s know what worked for you and what didn’t. We will print an article in the July cat to help out others plan for resiliance

Phacelia

Maybe this is a one off glitch, maybe we have to think far far more seriously about food security and get real about which crops will actually reliably perform! We're aiming to ensure we are growing high brix crops which apparently are not anywhere near so affected by climate changes, or glitches as much!!

Next week I’ll let you know what we harvested from the garden this month and what it’s retail value was. I do know that I have fed a lot of people this month and I haven’t been to the supermarket once!

Cosmos Sunset and Squash

Things I’m noticing this summer…

• The Bio Pesticide that I put on before all this rain began weeks ago is still keeping the white cabbage butterflies from laying eggs on the cabbage and the seedlings it was sprayed on. It clearly remains as a living microbe population on the leaves of the plants and keeps working!
• The mid season corn may not ripen, growing too slowly with little sun,
• Same with the peppers, we are just eating our first ripe peppers now, they usually begin ripening mid January.
• Unsure what will happen with the rock melons… they should be ripe by now
• The bees have hardly been able to get out, I think 3 significant honey harvesting days in February!
• The cucumbers swell and ripen only when there is sun, so they are going along in fits and starts,
• The early pumpkins ( Delicata, Zimbabwe squash, Red Kuri.. Table Queen )…are great, but I have serious reservations about whether the long keepers will store at all, they don’t look as though they will ripen and mature…. remains to be seen and may depend on the weather over next 6 weeks!
• The things that have done well are; tampala, ( an outstanding summer green, which is highly nutritious as well) the courgettes ( Crookneck Squash) over 8 kgs of small squash off each plant; carrots beetroot, chives, barley, millet, Dalmatian cabbage all seem to love this weather.. the best carrots ever.
• I harvested the first two lots of my dried beans, and also miraculously managed to get a sunny day to finish drying and cleaning them. I was happy with the yields for the first crop in a new garden. For both beans I harvested 600gms per sq m of dried beans ready to store. These were the dwarf varieties Sinton and Mother In Law. The Sinton beans were perfect, no bad beans nothing to throw away, however the Mother In Law were so beautiful to grow, I loved their mauve skins as they dried and I was so excited about growing them because they are outstanding as baked bean beans, but they didn’t like the wet conditions, and around 1/3 of the beans once they were dried and cleaned were so badly damaged by the wet conditions that I would think twice about growing them in an area that has wet summers. They have thin skins.
• The next plantings of carrots beetroot, daikon, turnips are all up and looking good,
• The winter brassica seedlings are looking good, protected from white butterfly and other pests with Bio:Pesticide.
• We have covered a great looking Sumire Mochi hulless barley crop and foxtail millet with bird netting
• We will be harvesting our Proso millet this week, if we get a break in the rain or a little sun!

Proso Millet

• Vegetables coming out our ears! 16 weeks after beginning to dig this garden! I’m weighing everything so will give updates at the end of each monthto show how much value is coming off the garden each month.
• We harvested some of our dried beans this week. It’s many years since I’ve grown Mother In Law beans, Gail Aiken grows them for the Institute, and I really really love them. They are dwarf bush beans that are specific drying beans, they are small white beans that make great baked beans, but they do send up short tendrils as if they want to climb, but then they stop. The pods are very short but prolific and as they dry go through an outstandingly beautiful mauve stage. I also harvested our Sinton beans, which are our soup beans. I haven’t finished drying them yet so don’t have weights per sq m available at this stage.
• The comfrey patch Bob planted so carefully in late November is looking amazing and most plants are at the harvesting stage so we shifted our chickens on to the house site this week.
• Our aim is to be supplying all the chicken feed, from our site. Comfrey will supply 50% of the protein they need for 7-8 months of the year. There will also be a special alfalfa patch as well especially to feed chickens fish and rabbits. The comfrey patch and the alfalfa patch are at the bottom of the housesite so that they will pick up the any nutrient run off and we can then feed that back up the site to the compost, chickens, rabbits, and fish.
• We have set up serious worm farms, ( they are eating the cow manure from the house cow and the rabbit and chicken manure ) to grow worms to feed the chickens., year round … (the recently released book called The Small Scale Poultry Flock by Harvey Ussery is the best book I’ve ever seen for addressing everything including how to feed your chickens without industrial grains.)
• We will make compost in their straw yard so that they can be turning that and feeding from that, and we are also planning the small orchard that will be planted around the chicken yard as a food forest which will be designed to be dropping a wide range of seeds especially for feeding chickens. We are on the edge of shifting to the autumn garden now and over the next 6 weeks our garden which is divided into quarters will be rotating. The quarter of the garden that grew our summer heavy feeders (pumpkins, tomatoes, peppers, greens, cucumbers etc) will become the roots and legumes part of the garden, and the ¼ of the garden that had the roots and legumes will become a carbon crop (oats, barley wheat etc) part of the garden, and the ¼ of the garden that grew our heavy feeding carbon crops ( sweet corn and flour corn) will become the light feeding carbon crops ( broad beans and vetch, and tic beans), and the 1/4 that contains the light feeding carbon crops ( millet, barley, etc ) will be composted and fed heavily and will become our winter heavy feeder ( brassicas, all the greens etc) . Now is a good time to plan that transition and get your seedling in. Check out pages 140 -146 of the Koanga garden guide to see how that works.

30 January 2012 (Week 15)

It is now 4 weeks since we began harvesting food from this new garden… most things have not come on line yet but we added up the weights and approx values and this is what we have harvested so far....

Green Beans - 5.1kg
Courgettes - 7.5 kg
Orach - 1 kg
Lettuce - 27
Beetroot - 2.4kg
Cucumber - 3
Tomato - 1.1 kg
Collards - 9 kg
Delicata Squash - 3
Red Kuri Pumpkin - 1.5 kgs
Zambesi squash 3kgs

We reckon this would be valued at more than $300, based on the price of food in the local organic shop.

I did everything I could to grow high brix food, in terms of getting the beds well aerated, moist and with the right minerals in the right relationships. I added to my beds 400 gms of Nature’s garden, 200 gms Active Calcium 400 gms of Biochar, 400 gms of Para magnetic rock dust per square metre and I then added 100 gms per sq m of Nature’s garden after planting three times together with foliar applications on a weekly basis. All of those things meant soil that had been growing grass with a brix of around 4 was now growing vege with a brix of up to 17 in 14 weeks. Not everything is 17 but everything is getting there. I believe all of that has probably cost me $10 per sq m. in 4 weeks I have paid off 33 meters of my garden. I wonder how long it will take to pay the whole garden off. Perhaps I’ll add up all the hose and tool costs too next time and just look at very very real costs and returns. I imagine the returns will go up dramatically now as the tomatoes and peppers and melons and pumpkins and onions etc come on line.

• I had the experience this week of seeing that our Biopesticide kills the white cabbage butterfly caterpillars, useful info as we are about to begin planting our brassicas for the winter.
• Because we established our garden around the contour and the paths are on the swale lines I have been able to water my pumpkins by soaking the swale above them. pumpkins don’t like being watered from above so that is a big advantage.. same thing with potatoes.

Pumpkin patch on the contour

• I’ve grown Mother In Law bean and Dalmatian Peans as my drying beans this season, the Peans are absolutely outstanding in terms of plant vigour and productivity. They are drying beans at the bottom and still growing vigorously at the top and setting loads of beans. They are one of those rare outstanding vegetables that can be green beans, then shellout beans then the best dried beans! The Mother In Law beans pods are turning a stunning purple colour which alone makes them worth growing.

Netting over the proso millet.

• On a less excited note I am battling the birds to harvest the proso millet. I think I have the netting pegged down well enough, we’ll set tonight when I go back to the garden!

My 12 week old Home garden

We’ve had 2 weeks of rain over xmas and New Year, always a stressful time when we are taking care of tomatoes and potatoes… blight is always in my mind after 30 years of seriously growing large areas of these crops! This summer after having taken so much care of getting the right minerals in the right relationships, and doing my regular foliar sprays ( EF Growth foliar then after 4 sprays switching to EF:FruitSeed foliar) I have no blight after all this rain!!! ( I have also been using our Bio Pesticide spray which also acts as a bio fungicide as well). The potatoes in my garden and the tomatoes look outstanding.

This past week we began harvesting food from our 12 week old garden...800 gms of Market Wonder beans, 12 Crookneck Squash from 2 plants, orach for three omelettes, and 12 lettuces. Bob has now double dug the bed right around the outside of the garden which is going to be our perennial vegetable section… more about that later… The section of my home garden that has the heavy feeders, the tomatoes, peppers, pumpkins, courgettes, cucumbers, lettuces, melons and onions .. is looking particularly fantastic. I’m totally going for high brix and maximum production on every square metre and I have erected bamboo and ti tree tri pods over all the cucumber and Delicata squash as well as the Zimbabwe squash and the Zambesi Gem, all well suited to this method of growing. Green Chestnut is a bush and won’t climb, and Chucks Winter and the other long keepers are too vigorous however Red Kuri can also be trained up a trellis.

I’ve been applying EF:FruitSeed Foliar and I’m sure my pumpkins are responding by setting way more fruit. I have Delicata that were planted on October 10th and into the garden November 10th, and now on January 4th they have already set 30 fruit on each plant and they have only just begun climbing the tipee!!!. I’m excited!!




Heavy Feeders Looking Great

Port Albert Cucumbers climbing up.

A quarter of the garden is in root crops and legumes, a quarter in heavy feeders; ie pumpkins, cucumbers lettuces, greens, onions, garlic, tomatoes, and a quarter in heavy feeders that are also carbon, corn and flour corn, crops ( so we grow soil as well as food) and another quarter in carbon/ calorie crops (so we grow calories as well as carbon for the soil). The garden is divided into ¼’s so that the rotation plan works easily.


This is the time of year when we are looking for summer drinks and special occasion drinks, that are actually good us and our families. Discovering kefir sodas was a very special thing (actually a member of the Koanga Institute sent me the kefir grains to make these drinks with).

Kefir Sodas are another kind of fermented food, and they are very special because they taste delicious and everybody enjoys them. They are great for children who can learn to make the drinks themselves, and they are even great for children’s party treats. The more you let the fermentation process work out, the drier, the more fizzy, and the less sweet the drink will be.
 
Kefir soda is made by fermenting a mixture of the kefir water grains (they are not the same grains as milk kefir grains), water, something for flavouring such as a slice of lemon or a piece of fruit, a few berries, some leaves of lemon verbena etc., and something sweet for the crystals to feed on. I use honey, or home made fruit juice, eg ½ apple juice ½ water, but you can also use rapadura or some form of sugar.
 
We make our sodas in 2 litre glass jars with screw on lids, and when ready to bottle we use 2 litre Grolsch beer bottles with fliptop lids which are perfect for the job.

You will need:

• 2l glass jars with screw on lids
• 2 Tbsp soda kefir grains
• Some good quality water, filtered if necessary
• Some sweetener which becomes food for the kefir grain and will be used up in the fermentation process, to the extent you choose. I use fruit juice, rapadura or honey, they all  taste good. In 2 litres of soda I use around 2 heaped dstsp of honey, 1 cup fruit home made fruit juice, or 2 Tbsp of rapadura.  The amounts are flexible and you will find the balance that you prefer with a little trial an error.
• Something to flavour the soda with. I usually use the same thing every time, a few thin slices of fresh ginger (which we grow in our green house) and 1 lemon sliced thinly skin and all, or just the juice of 1 lemon. You could use any kind of fruit, but berries and feijoas are very good. Other ideas are elderflowers, lemon balm, lemon grass or lemon verbena, chamomile, mint and orange flowers… The list is endless - you can be very creative with kefir.

 
Put all ingredients into your 2 litre jar, put the lid on  tight, and leave in a warm place until you see bubbles around the top. In the Summer I leave the jar on the kitchen bench, in the Winter I put it into the hot water cupboard or beside the woodstove. It is ideal if it takes about 2-3 days to produce bubbles.

Once you have small bubbles, simply strain the liquid through a sieve to into your flip top bottle, and leave for 2 days before drinking. This will finish the process of turning the sugar into fizz and make it a delicious and super healthy drink. It is super healthy because of the range of bacteria and fungi that the kefir grains impart into the drink, which are very good for our entire digestive system.

Then you need to retrieve your kefir grains from the sieve, rinse them under the tap and begin your next jar of soda. Just as it is with all of these ‘living’ foods, the air temperature and season will affect the way they work so you have to tune in.

Placing your bottled sodas in the fridge will slow down the process of fermentation if that is what you need. 
These kefir soda crystals keep on multiplying, so you will be able to pass them around once you have more than you need. 

These principles are:

• Eat whole natural foods
• Eat only foods that will spoil but eat them before they do
• Eat naturally raised meat including fish, seafood, poultry, beef, lamb, game organ meats and eggs
• Eat whole naturally produced milk products from pasture fed cows, preferably raw and/or fermented, such as yoghurt, kefir, cultured butter, whole cheeses and fresh and sour cream
• Use only traditional fats and oils including butter and other animal fats, extra virgin olive oil, expeller pressed sesame and flaxseed oils and the tropical oils, coconut and palm
• Use whole grains and nuts that have been prepared by soaking, sprouting or sour levening to neutralize phytic acid and other nutrients
• Include enzyme enhanced lacto fermented vegetables, fruits, beverages and condiments in your diet on a regular basis
• Prepare home made meat stocks from the bones of chicken beef lamb or fish and use liberally in soups and sauces
• Use herb teas and coffee substitutes in moderation
• Use filtered water for drinking cooking
• Use solar dried, unrefined sea salt and a variety of spices for food interest and appetite stimulation
• Make your own salad dressing using raw vinegar, extra virgin olive oil and expeller pressed flaxseed oil
• Use natural sweeteners in moderation such as honey, maple syrup, shakkar and stevia
• Use only unpasteurised wine and use in moderation
• Cook only in stainless steel, glass, cast iron or good quality enamel
• Get plenty of sleep, exercise and natural light

His book "Nutrition and Human Degeneration" is a profoundly interesting but disturbing book that is a must read if we’re serious about our health and the future of the human race. Sally Fallon is the director of the Weston A. Price Foundation and her cookbooks "Nourishing Traditions" and "Eat fat Lose Fat" are wonderful books too.

More information can be found on the Weston A. Price Foundation Website

These principles are:

• Eat whole natural foods
• Eat only foods that will spoil but eat them before they do
• Eat naturally raised meat including fish, seafood, poultry, beef, lamb, game organ meats and eggs
• Eat whole naturally produced milk products from pasture fed cows, preferably raw and/or fermented, such as yoghurt, kefir, cultured butter, whole cheeses and fresh and sour cream
• Use only traditional fats and oils including butter and other animal fats, extra virgin olive oil, expeller pressed sesame and flaxseed oils and the tropical oils, coconut and palm
• Use whole grains and nuts that have been prepared by soaking, sprouting or sour levening to neutralize phytic acid and other nutrients
• Include enzyme enhanced lacto fermented vegetables, fruits, beverages and condiments in your diet on a regular basis
• Prepare home made meat stocks from the bones of chicken beef lamb or fish and use liberally in soups and sauces
• Use herb teas and coffee substitutes in moderation
• Use filtered water for drinking cooking
• Use solar dried, unrefined sea salt and a variety of spices for food interest and appetite stimulation
• Make your own salad dressing using raw vinegar, extra virgin olive oil and expeller pressed flaxseed oil
• Use natural sweeteners in moderation such as honey, maple syrup, shakkar and stevia
• Use only unpasteurised wine and use in moderation
• Cook only in stainless steel, glass, cast iron or good quality enamel
• Get plenty of sleep, exercise and natural light

His book "Nutrition and Human Degeneration" is a profoundly interesting but disturbing book that is a must read if we’re serious about our health and the future of the human race. Sally Fallon is the director of the Weston A. Price Foundation and her cookbooks "Nourishing Traditions" and "Eat fat Lose Fat" are wonderful books too.

More information can be found on the Weston A. Price Foundation Website

One is a very finely ground form of Diatomaceous Earth, (psyllid solution) that is being widely used in the potato industry internationally. Basically,it works only on insects that have externalskeletons such as shield bugs and psyllids.The finely ground diatomaceous earth gets into their joints and they die.We have found that method successful when used it from late November onwards-spraying weekly, until the cooler nights return in March. 

Last Summer, we used another solution on part of our potato crop and we were super excited to have great success as well. The newest generation of fungicides and pesticides are microbe-based and totally harmless to all, except the pest and fungal problems we are wanting to control. We call this one our Bio Pesticide, designed by Grant at Environmental Fertilisers, but sold to home gardeners by Koanga. It consists of a huge range of microbes that,in their way,create a healthy balance on your plants and in that way, keep things strong- similar to applying compost tea,but far more microbes are applied.This is the first time I have ever felt comfortable with sprays that have fungicidal and pesticidal properties. So,it's exciting to be able watch them work. We found in the wet summer last year that the Bio Pesticide only needed putting on every 3-4 or so because the leaves were constantly warm and moist. The microbes simply lived and multiplied and did their own thing. In a hot dry summer,it may have to be applied weekly. Of course,if we have our brix levels high enough,our plants will not attract these pests and fungal attacks, but the reality is,we are all on the journey there... so, the Bio Pesticide and the Psyllid Solution are both a great interim solutions. 

Joseph Land, our main potato grower in the North, has not seen them yet in his garden, but not only must we be prepared, we must also put systems in place to ensure we can grow high quality potatoes with psyllids around in order to keep our potato collection alive and strong.

How are we going to maintain our precious heritage potato lines in the face of this pest? Scott Lawson has put together some notes for us about the psyllids that are taking out our potatoes and tomatoes, thanks heaps Scott!

What is it?
The insect ‘TPP’ stands for ‘Tomato, Potato Psyllid’, the scientific name is Bactericera cockerelli, the adult is about 2-3mm long and resembles a tiny cicada. Mature adults have white strips on their backs. Both the early life cycle stages, nymphs, and the adults, are sucking feeders. The female adults lay up to 500 eggs over their lifetime; these eggs are laid on the edge of the leaf, attached by a short stalk, difficult to see with an untrained eye, a magnifying glass will help. In warmer areas a life cycle can be completed in 4 weeks, so this pest can very quickly build up to large numbers. The nymphs look like small scale insects, slow moving and living on the underside of the leaves. The psyllid spreads a bacteria called Liberibacter solanacearum. This, together with the sucking damage done to the plants, causes great losses in our tomato, potato and other solanaceous crops. This bacterium is not harmful to humans. The first visual sign of the pest on a potato crop are in October and November, with this being earlier in warmer parts of the upper North Island and perhaps after Christmas in the South Island. The psyllid overwinters on a wide range of plants, such as hawthorn, nightshade etc.

History of psyllid:
It originated in Mexico and has spread up the western seaboard of the USA up to Oregon, but contained to the west of the Mississippi River. It arrived in Auckland in 2006, suspected to have been carried on imported capsicums or cut flowers, since then the sap sucking pest has wrecked havoc in the solanacea family of tomato, potato, tamarillos, capsicum and eggplant/aubergine. It has spread north from Auckland, and south arriving in Hawkes Bay 2008, and has been found as far south as Timaru.
See trapping data on www.potatoesnz.co.nz.

New Zealand has 5 species of native psyllid, none of which are known to affect crop production, only a trained eye under a microscope can tell the difference between species.

Effect on production in NZ
Prior to the arrival of the psyllid NZ enjoyed only a few difficult pests that affected the solanacea family, primarily this was 2 insect pests Heliothis zea, now known as Helicoverpa zea (common name is ‘tomato fruit worm’ in tomatoes and ‘corn ear worm’ in sweetcorn), and Phthorimaea operculella (common name is ‘tuber moth’ in potatoes).

NZ’s growers had developed good cultural and biological controls of these two pests, i.e. parasitic wasps had been released to target the tomato fruit worm, which was effective enough for many conventional growers not to have to use insecticides, sorry to see this has now changed with the arrival of this new pest, with most growers implementing a rigorous spray programme.

Many growers are exiting the industry because the extra costs spent on products to try to control the psyllid pests are not being recovered in market prices. Some organic growers have exited the industry due to inability to produce a marketable crop.

Symptoms
Both the early life cycle stages, nymphs, and the adults are sucking feeders. When feeding, they inject saliva into the plants causing psyllid yellows. The plant growth is stunted and often in potatoes the first signs are curling leaves and purple coloured tips. As the plant continues to grow, many varieties of potatoes exhibit aerial tubers, and bulbing of the stems, also the crop tends to set high in the mould, close to the surface and small in size. The effect on the plant is variable between varieties and the time of the year. However yield loss of 50-80% in main season potato crops. The balance of the crop produced is very much 2nd grade, often with internal defects affecting the cooking quality, and premature sprouting is something growers are noticing, not good for packed product on a shop shelf. After boiling the texture is often mushy with an earthy taste, not at all what an unaffected tuber will taste like. Commercial Potato Processors have rejected many hundreds of tons due to internal defects such as ‘zebra chip’ caused by Liberibacter, which when fried show dark zebra chip stripes. You can see this in fresh tubers as well, but not as pronounced as when it is fried.

Control Measures
Organic growers are very limited in options available. Biological control is some way off, with this area needing a lot more research, no known predator exists in NZ to offer suitable control.

Products
Entomopathogenic Fungi have been trialled, i.e. a fungi cultured in a lab and then applied to the crop to target the pest, this occurs naturally under the correct conditions and is often seen on brassicas crops infected with white butterfly. The issue is getting the fungi to develop and then attack the pest, variables of the amount of active fungi and low humidity can affect the efficacy of such a product. It is easier to use under a controlled environment indoors in glasshouses, where humidity can be controlled. Conventional growers are having some success with this range of products indoors.

Spraying oils such as the botanical based Eco-Oil can be tried, Neem Oils and Neem extracts such as Neem-Azal, which is a botanical insecticide have some effect as discouraging feeding. Another option to try is naturally derived diatomaceous earth which is 85% silicon dioxide, packed by Koanga Gardens for home gardeners as Psyllid Solution.

Research
Plant and Food Research in con- junction with industry groups such as HortNZ, incl. PotatoesNZ and overseas with research facilities have initiated an industry wide collaborated approach. Potato growers are helping to fund the research through their levies and also through voluntary contributions. Potato processors, seed suppliers and marketers are all involved in trying to find an economic and environmental control solution.

These are my (Kay’s) strategies for dealing with Psyllids:
1. High Brix first, probably around 12. Insects will not see the potatoes as insect food, different vibration that they actually aren’t attracted to.
2. Grow your own seed potatoes and select the best croppers each year from the whole crop as explained in our 2010 July catalogue by Gail when describing Joseph’s potato growing techniques.
3. Plant your potatoes early to avoid the psyllid which only becomes active in warmer weather, i.e. plant your potatoes between mid-August and mid-September.
4. Use a combination of weekly sprays to keep psyllids away or to kill them, from the time the weather warms up, possibly Labour weekend on. I suggest Neem Oil fortnightly, and Psyllid Solution every other fortnight.
5. Good luck, we’re keen to hear your stories.
 

We’ve had lots of queries this spring about growing corn, especially about how close you can grow it to other corn varieties and still be able to eat it.

Home gardeners this season have planted a lot of our heritage, non GE corn. We’ve noticed that individual gardeners are trying lots of varieties in their gardens all at once. Many are asking about planting distances and many may not be aware that if you plant popping corn, for example, right next door to sweet corn, you may not be able to eat your sweet corn because many of the kernels may be crossed with popcorn which has quite different qualities to sweet corn. It may also mean that your popcorn doesn’t pop because it is crossed with sweet corn. You can actually see in the seed of your cobs if your corn has crossed. In many crops, they can cross and you won’t know until you grow them out the following year, but with sweet corn, you can see in the kernels if it is crossed. If you cross sweet corn with sweet corn, then you will still be able to eat the cobs, they will still be sweet corn, even if the colours are not true, but if you have sweet corn crossed with popcorn or flour corn, you may not like what you get to eat as sweet corn. So beware!!!

Some of you may also jump to the conclusion that the seed you bought was crossed, because the kernels on the cobs will look crossed if you’ve grown different varieties in very close proximity. It is not the seed you bought that is crossed, but it has crossed because it was growing too close close to other corn in your garden!!!

I can’t guarantee exactly how far apart you need to plant your corn varieties to avoid crossing altogether, because it is different in different situations; however, the more plants you plant of any one kind, the more pollen there will be and the further it may travel in a wind. Home gardeners usually have only 1- 2 packets  of each kind and I would suggest that you keep each variety at least two or three beds away from each other to avoid major crossing, or be sure to stagger the planting so they are at least a month apart between your popping and sweetcorn. 

Click here, If you’re keen to save your own seed for the Gramineae family.

Every where I go, but especially in Northland where the soils are heavy, I have people coming up to me to tell me about their Koanga Gardens fruit trees. Quite often people say that some have done well, others not. Obviously everybody wants all their trees to do well and so they want to know why they aren’t.
Often I go and look at them, and the reasons for trees not doing well are always the same.

I always want to say, if you treated your children like this what would you expect to happen!

If you want your fruit trees to grow into large successful heavy croppers of nutrient dense fruit you have to take care of them!!! That begins with the way you plant them, especially for those of us on heavy clay soils or soils that are very different to those our fruit trees evolved with.

When I plant a fruit tree I always think on where in the world that fruit tree has come from, what sort of climate, environment did it evolve in, what was the guild of plants animals microbes birds and insects that were part of it’s family……and how can I recreate that situation as close as possible in my garden. Design Your Own Ochard talks about that lots more and covers the guild each tree belongs to and needs to grow  well. I suggest if you are going to be planting an orchard you get yourself a copy of my book and study that first.

We must also pay very careful attention to how we plant our trees, it makes a huge difference!

Koanga Tree Planting Instructions
The aim of these instructions to is to make sure you end up with a strong healthy tree that grows a main frame fast and is capable of producing high brix crops for many years.

1. Dig a hole 1mx1mx1m for each tree, that is a 1 cubic metre hole for each tree. If you are on heavy clay, or soil that does not drain you will have to put drainage out the bottom of your hole, and if you are unable to do that you may have to build your tree space partly up above the existing soil surface.

2. As you dig out the soil, separate topsoil from subsoil.

3. Mix your top soil  50/50 with  compost. You must use high quality aerobically made compost. That excludes all the municiple compost available in shops as far as I know, you  have to get organized and make it yourself, or you could use well composted hay or well rotted bark etc  

4. If you have your own compost, and it has been made aerobically using high brix plant and animal ingredients, and you have also added minerals especially calcium and phosphate, and seaweed  then you may not need to also add fertilser, but I would suggest you add paramagnetic rock dust to get the current flowing and things moving.

or
5.    If you don’t have amazing high quality aerobic  highly mineralized, biologically active compost, we suggest you add 5kgs of Soil-Force mixed through out topsoil /compost mix, or sprinkled in layers throughout the hole per tree. EFSoil-Force contains Sechura R.P.R.(soft rock phosphate) providing valuable Calcium+Phosphorus+Trace Elements which is composted with Humic Acid, Fish Protein, 4 Seaweeds, Lucerne Dust, animal manures and a highly paramagnetic Basalt Rock Dust (CGS4400). It is also inoculated with beneficial bacteria and soil fungi (eg Azobacter, Trichoderma, Bacillus Subtillus and Bio -Vam Mycorrhizal fungi)

6.    Plant your tree into the hole so that it is sitting in the soil at the same level as it was in the nursery or pot previously, and making sure it is on a small mound, so that as the soil in the hole settles your tree will not be in a hollow!

7.    Your tree will also grow better and perform better if you plant it so that the strongest roots face into the South. Trees roots will have aligned already in the nursery with the magnetic field in the earth which means the strongest roots will face south, so if you can also plant it facing this direction, your tree will perform better and be happier! From now on all Koanga gardens Brand fruit trees will have a paint dot on the North side of the tree so you can also check how to plant it.

8. Make a berm around the tree at a radius of 1m around the tree to hold all the nutrients and mulch and moisture inside it.. you may have to breach this berm in the winter so it does not hold water inside and drown the tree! After year 2 it won’t be necessary to maintain the berm.

9. Sprinkle another kilo of your top class compost around the tree out to 1m radius all around  the tree or inside your berm and mulch heavily to suppress weeds over the summer
or
 sprinkle 500gms of EFSoil-Force, around the tree to a radius of 1m all around the tree or inside your berm and mulch heavily to suppress weeds and help maintain moisture over the summer

10. Continue feeding your tree on an annual basis each Autumn after the rains come using either highly mineralised composted animal manure or high quality highly mineralized compost or EF Soil Force or other suitable biological fertilser.

 Our advice  is to plant only as many fruit trees as you can take care of in this way. Your rewards will out weight the effort required!

Kay learned to propagate these old trees from the then elderly members of the NZ Tree Crops Assn, especially George Sinnock, as well as the many old orchardists and tree people she was spending time with. Kay developed a nursery to save the old trees she was collecting as it very quickly became obvious that these were special trees that not only needed saving but available again to the general public.


Her journey with the old trees and the stories of the trees people and places they came from is documented in her top selling book Design Your Own Orchard, as well as two Country Calendar programs made by Television NZ, one on the Kaipara Harbour, the other on the Whanganui River, and the stories of these old trees are on our website with pictures of their fruit.


Throughout these years it has become clear just how critical they are for our future, they are the food plants our ancestors co evolved with over the last 2,000 years, and it is now well documented that they contain many times more nutrition than shop brought fruit. 


The Koanga Institute moved to Wairoa in early 2011. Since then we have been working hard to re-establish our heritage fruit tree collections and a nursery on the land here. We are now actively involved with the wider community here saving the heritage trees of this area too. The Koanga Institute still maintains a Northern bioregional collection in the far north as well, managed b Gail Aitken. 


So far we have planted 100 fruit trees from our collection and around 40 berry cultivars from our heritage berry collection. The next few years will see these plantings grow rapidly. The fruit trees are being planted at 6m spacings so that we have room to create a multipurpose food forest. In particular our aim is to supply fat and protein in the form of legume seeds for the poultry in the food forest as well as fruit and nuts for interns. Other goals are to provide edible fungi, edible and medicinal herbs, coppicing firewood and  shelter, grown in a regenerative way for our interns who will be living in this forest.


We have also begun a small nursery that will continue to collect heritage fruit trees from this area and other areas with similar climatic conditions, and as a research nursery to support the small commercial nurseries now growing trees from our collection for sale around. 


Kay and others will be mentors for our interns who choose the orchard/nursery option on the Spring internship with the Koanga Institute.

Koanga Institute Food Forest and Nursery
The Koanga institute fruit tree collection has been evolving over the past 30 years. Read more here...

We are also continuing to collect heritage trees to add to our collection, especially from the Northern Bioregion and now the East Coast region.


As we develop this food forest area, we aim to;

• save and develop our fruit tree collection so we can see what we’ve got, and do comparative trials
• maintain a supply of scion wood, budwood, cuttings and seeds for propagation in the nursery
• create an inspiring place to camp for our students and interns
• produce fruit, nuts, herbs, eggs, honey, firewood, mushrooms and meat (poultry)   for our interns and PDC students
• remineralise and support a microbially active soil through careful design and management
• ensure that all food produced will be high brix ( nutrient dense) as measured by refractometer
• have super low maintenance costs for entire system
• create a model to use as an educational resource
• create a place to research better and better ways of doing things , in particular how to design and manage food forests in our climate and soils to maximize sustainability and productivity.
• Trial many varieties of legumes to discover which ones work best for us.

The nursery is also being established within the suntrap shelter belt of the wider orchard area and will in itself be  a model of how nurseries can be designed. Most commercial nurseries use an unbelievable amount of toxic materials, here at Koanga we're aiming to be actually regenerating the land at the same time as growing strong healthy trees.

Some of our strategies here are to;


• grow carbon crops for composting in half of the nursery area each year,
• make compost with carbon crops ( lupins and oats mostly because in our soils they are able to unlock and release calcium and phosphate extremely effectively) as well as comfrey and alfalfa which we will grow patches of in the nursery area
• use Reams soil tests to ascertain which minerals we're lacking in our soils, and...
• add minerals in the short term to our compost and to our garden beds
• use foliar sprays to balance minerals needed
• use compost teas, with a focus on supporting fungal activity.
• use ducks and weeder geese for weed and pest control
• develop our own liquid fertilisers and compost teas

This project is the integration of many smaller projects we have been doing over many years, and much learning will come out of it. There are many ways future  incomes could be derived from the information and learning that will come from this project. Every bio region needs such a depository for local biodiversity, research and propagation not to mention models for inspiration, and models for living sustainably and simply.
Consider becoming 1of the 2 interns we take that will be working in the project click here for more info on our Spring internship intake and program.

We have time put aside each day for the students to work in their groups and all teachers are available at these times to support each group to learn and get the most out of the exercise. It is not about competition but everybody sharing everything so maximum learning occurs and excellent results are achieved.

We find students  have skills that add to the pool so there is also a lot of learning between students as well.
On our last PDC we had  4 groups of designers.

• 1 group did a ¼ acre design for a family coming to live here following their list of dreams and needs
• 1 group designed the ‘village green’  that sits within one of the clusters in our community. They were asked to come up with a plan that would meet the needs of the group of 12 families that would be living around the edges of the village green including shelter, common fruit, nuts and amenity trees , social support and interaction, privacy, firewood, and generally creating a beautiful environment to live in.

Urban Design.

Next to the Institute house, we have a small section garden that we have been using for our urban design exercises. 

Because of the number of students wanting to do the urban design this time we had 2 groups doing urban designs. As you can see the results were outstanding and very creative! (designs below) We gave them all the same brief, and we now have 4 or 5 200 sq m urban designs based on it. All are different, all contain great ideas. Here are the latest two to add to those already done.

Shaked, who did this PDC ( he was in the village green design team) , did a concept plan for a possible urban design along the front of the Koanga Institute house during the Urban Design Workshop within his Internship (which followed on after the PDC)  and is staying on here to create a final detailed design and implement it over the next year.  We also plan on implementing the 200 sq m urban design as a model for what is possible……. to inspire others.

Following is a glimpse of the design work done. As usual the standard just keeps on getting better and better , and was outstanding again this time.

The Koanga Institute holds 2 Permaculture Design Courses each year - one in February and another in September. Book Now to get your early bird discount!

The PDC is suitable for anyone ready to learn - and appropriate for all levels of experience, and is a pre-requisite for our 10 week Internship Program.

So we’re on a mission to see if we can design and implement an urban garden ( 200sq m)  that can provide a family of 4 something close to the levels of Vitamin A and calcium Weston Price found in all indigenous people’s diets that he visited in the 1920’s and 30’s. It is my understanding, from our own experience that if we cover the Vitamin A and calcium most other minerals and vitamins are taken care of. For an intro to this project click here

This is the brief
We have an urban, low income family in a large city who are super resourceful, with common sense and basic handy man (and woman) skills, who are very keen to learn and would like a design for their 200sqm urban garden to produce as much as possible of the key elements of nutrition needed to keep their family of 2 adults and 2 children (aged 4 and 6) super healthy. They are eating following the principles of the Weston Price Foundation. They are concerned that high quality food is not easy to buy and is not affordable, and that it is likely that this situation will rapidly become worse. In particular it is difficult to obtain high enough levels of Vitamin A calcium and traditional fats and oils in an industrial diet.  

They have been given some money ($2,000) which they want to use to establish this garden, to enrich their lives in every way.

They live in a Mediterranean climate, cold in winter, maybe 20 frosts between 1-5 degrees celsius below, normally very hot and dry in the summer, with free draining sandy loam soils and a water table around 1m below the surface. Rainfall annual average, 1600mm.

They have every weekend to work in their garden, and in the summer, evenings as well. They dream that this garden can be their fun, their work, their play, their connection with nature, their connection with their own ancestors. They also dream that the skills they use and the resources this garden might produce could enable and empower them to take the skills to their wider community.

Obviously there will be endless ways to do this. We’d love feedback and ideas from you all.

Design work at the Koanga Institute
On our last PDC we gave our students an option of designing an urban garden following this brief.. Our students got right into this challenge, and some great ideas emerged from both groups who chose this design option. Out of these two designs/ideas we will now draw up a final design that will be implemented on our internship program beginning in September after our next PDC. Both groups of designers spent some time researching what foods contain high levels of  calcium and Vitamin A and traditional fats.

Where are we to get our daily requirement of calcium on 200 sq m ?

Checking out the chart below it is clear that unpasteurised dairy products  and bone broth are way ahead of anything else in being able to provide this calcium requirement. I’ve seen countries where it is normal to keep a milking sheep or goat penned up and taken for daily walks to find food and or have food carried to them. That is an option which uses the resources of the wider area and is certainly a real possibility in many places. I have seen goats and sheep penned up very happily in dry warm situations, being taken for walks by young children during the day to browse for food. In the Western world this is less likely to be an acceptable option at this time, and in our designs here we have chosen other options.

In an ideal world we could have smaller cities with small farms surrounding them supplying raw milk and raw milk cheese to those in the city. It’s obviously going to be easy to get enough calcium if we do have access to raw milk ( pasteurized milk has the same levels of calcium but the enzymes are killed, and so  it is difficult to absorb the calcium ). If I was vegetarian I would choose the sheep/goat option. dairy is the easiest way to get our calcium from our own garden. Apart from raw dairy, bone broth is the obvious solution, if we can produce enough bones to be consuming 2 cups of bone broth every day, with the remainder made up of a mix of green vegetables, olives, and nuts. For this to be possible we not only need a very good design but we need our family to be building skills around animal management.

It will be critical for gardeners to understand that if we have low brix vegetables, then feeding low brix vegetables to our rabbits or chickens or ducks will simply recycle the deficiencies. our goal must be to produce high brix plant material to feed ourselves and our animals, so those minerals can be recycled through us!

Where are we to get our daily requirement of Vitamin A?I thought this was going to be the greatest challenge but I found the calcium challenge was far harder. Rabbits have large livers which are relatively high in vitamin A, and 1 rabbit liver a week is nearly enough vitamin A for 2 adults and 2 children. 1 fish meal a week from an aquaponic system and high quality eggs could add significantly to that along with small amounts of animal fat from ducks or chickens. It seems that vitamin A does not occur in any vegetable sources except as a precursor to vitamin A (beta carotene) which children can not convert, and neither can anybody with a less than very strong liver, and even then the conversion process is not 1:1, you get far less vitamin A in the conversion process than you began with in the beta carotene.
Liver is by far our best option for ensuring we receive our Vitamin A intake as you will se in the following chart. In the second chart below you  will see the things we find easiest to get our Vitamin A from in our daily diets.

Traditional Fats
Lastly where are our traditional fats going to come from.
Indigenous people studied by Weston Price ate between 30-80% of the daily calorie intake as traditional fats, mostly animal fat, saturated animal fat or in the warmer climates olive oil and coconut oil. On 200 sq m getting enough fat will be a challenge. Rabbits are not animals that carry fat in their meat or under their skin but do apparently carry it around their internal organs, we have olives, but will need a lot more to be anywhere near 30% of daily calories. We will have a few chickens that have some fat level, some kinds of ducks are easy to put fat on, but do they have a place on a 200sq m garden? Eggs contain fat, and…….. believe it or not the higher the brix of the vegetables the higher the fat content and the higher quality that fat is, in the form of omega 3 and 6.

Having been eating following Weston Price principles for several years now and also having done the GAPS diet I would say that getting enough high quality fat will be the greatest challenge in a small garden. Once we get our bodies running on fat, as they evolved doing, rather than carbs as we currently do, we crave fat, rather than chocolate!

I never ever thought I would ever say this but if I was in a desperate situation in an urban area, trying to feed my family a diet I know will nourish them and future generations, with my current knowledge, and little money to spend on food, or high quality food unavailable to buy,  I would have to say that the obvious solution seems to be guinea pigs??? They get fat easily on vegetable scraps, and apparently taste very good. I have never eaten one or kept one but my children have had them as pets. ! I have a big learning curve here .

At this point I would be tempted to re think my decision around whether or not to include a milking sheep. I think if I knew I could find sheep forage in my area, parks, waste land etc etc I would choose to keep a milking sheep. Sheep milk is very, very fatty and makes delicious yoghurt !

Failing the sheep ( or even goat) option the next best way to grow our own traditional fat will be

• olive trees for pickled olives or oil if we can use somebody’s press
• eggs
• nuts
• animal fat from small animals ie guinea pigs, chickens, ducks, rabbits ( who store their fat around internal organs rather than in the meat or under the skin
• high brix vegetables contain high quality fats and oils especially Omega 3 and 6

 And so…

Following are the two designs done by students on the Koanga Institute April 2012 PDC. This was a real existing 200 sq m and already has the lemon and mandarin trees in it, along with the building that is the house the family live in.. Students were asked to leave them there.

Design 1.

• this team plan on the family getting their calcium from lots of bone broth, fish, rabbits, chickens and ducks!, with more minor amounts in the high brix fruit, vege and nuts.
• nuts are a feature in this design to maximise oils and minerals. hazel nuts, almond and olives will all grow in this space if they choose the right varieties, other sources of traditional fat will come with each of the animals species they have
• vitamin A will come from rabbit livers mainly but also from chicken and  duck livers, and fish,  and  from making bone broth using all of the animal parts especially the heads
• they chose heritage varieties of vegetables and fruit to maximize nutritional content
• they chose heritage fruit species that are known to contain high levels of nutrition eg berries and apples
• maximization of edges and vertical spaces with espalliered and cordoned trees, vines
• cordons allow for maximum length of ripening time, and maximum varieties for different end uses
• high quality chicken, duck, fish and rabbit food is grown on all paths and under trees , everywhere possible..comfrey dandelion, dock, tree prunings, weeds  etc
• Brown Leghorns were the breed selected because they are a high laying heritage breed
• Indian Runner ducks selected because they lay the most eggs of all ducks
• multipurpose greenhouse using integrated aquaponic system to use fish waste to grow crops and crops to clean water for fish, and heat from greenhouse to keep fish growing and soldier flies growing to feed fish and chickens and ducks
• multiple systems in place to produce own fish, duck, chicken, rabbit feed… worms under rabbits, soldier flies in greenhouse,  garden compost heap in chicken scratch yard, comfrey herbs everywhere possible,
• potential garden area maximized by keeping fruit trees minimal ( whilst ensuring year round fruit)
• garden beds Biointensively managed for sustainability and maximum production
• choice of crops for maximum nutrition in vege garden eg the heaviest  producing calorie crops are potatoes, kumara, Jerusalem artichokes, garlic, onions and leeks!
• bees in there too, great way to bring in nutrients resources from wider area

Design 2.

• quite a few similar ideas with some differences
• similar ways of providing basic fats , Vitamin A and calcium
• combination of animals, nuts fruit and vege combined with producing high quality animal food to feed animals
• check out the great energy in energy /out circle , a good way to understand what is going on and what we are aiming for
• more fruit trees in this design and less area for vege garden and nuts
• very special well integrated animal house, green house, animal food production (worms and soldier flies, seedling production  space… check out diagrams
• rabbits have access to grass in this design
• fryers in mobile pens on grassy paths and areas where weeds are let grow to feed them
• bees

Our next PDC is in September 2012. During that time we will draw up our final plan for our 200 sq m garden and publish that for you. Our interns will build that garden for $2000 or less in November
We’d love comments advice from those who have ideas/experience, particularly with animals in small spaces… possibly with Guinea pigs as food
 

As part of the Koanga Institute’s research program regarding relationships between human health, soil health, plant health, and animal health, we have come to the realisation that if we wish to be eating nourishing food that maintains our DNA for the long haul, we need to follow the principles or ‘Laws of Nature’ around how energy becomes matter, how we grow and maintain health, and how our plants and animals grow and maintain health.

Weston A. Price discovered that all the indigenous people he studied were getting at least 10 times the fat soluble vitamins and 4 times the minerals, compared to a Western diet of the same time (1930s). He also discovered that although they all ate very differently, they all followed the same principles in their diets. They knew how to eat to maintain their DNA so that they were extremely healthy and passed on strong genes. These are the principles of healthy traditional diets, discovered by Weston A. Price and others:

1. No refined or denatured foods.

2. All traditional cultures consumed some sort of animal protein and fat.

3. All diets contains 4x the minerals and 10x the fat soluble vitamins (A, D, K, E) found in foods like organ meats, fish eggs, fish liver oils, butter and egg yolks from pastured animals.... when compared to modern diets.

4. In all traditional cultures some animal products were eaten raw.

5. Total fat content of all traditional diets varied from 30 – 80% of daily calorie intake, and only around 4% of that was polyunsaturated oil. The balance was saturated and monounsaturated fatty acids.

6. Traditional diets had a high food enzyme content from raw meat and dairy and also fermented fruit, vegetables, and meat/fish.

7. Seeds, grains, and nuts were soaked, sprouted, fermented or naturally leavened in order to neutralise anti-nutrients in these foods such as phytic acid, enzyme inhibitors, tannins and complex carbohydrates.

8. Traditional diets contained nearly equal amounts of omega-6 and omega-3 fatty acids.

9. All primitive diets contained salt.

10. Traditional cultures consumed animal bones, usually in the form of gelatine rich bone broths.

11. Traditional cultures made provisions for the health of future generations by providing special nutrient rich foods for parents-to-be, pregnant women, and growing children.

As a lifelong gardener, and a Permaculture garden designer, I have never ever seen a design for a food garden that takes into account the fats, minerals and vitamins we actually need, according to science and history.

The relatively new science of epigenetics (see Deep Nutrition by Katherine Shanahan, Primal Body Primal Mind by Nora Gedgaudas) confirms the critical need to follow these principles. My understanding of the principles expounded by Dr Carey Reams, as written in Nourishment Home Grown by A.F. Beddoe supports these understandings as well.

I have come to the understanding that soil health, plant and animal health, and human health are intimately linked, in incredible ways beyond our ability to fully comprehend at this time. As microbes, plants, and animals, we actually have daily requirements for energy which comes from the interactions that take place in our bodies between the mineral compounds in the food we eat, during the digestion process (in the case of humans).
The implication of this is that if there is a long term shortage or imbalance of minerals, then plants, animals and humans are not able to absorb those minerals, and that energy shortage shows as ill health, degenerative disease or premature ageing.

According to Dr. Weston Price, we need around 1500mg of available calcium on a daily basis, and at least 10,000 IU of Vitamin A on a daily basis although our bodies can store that so some variation can be coped with. If we don’t get the vitamin A, we can’t absorb the minerals or perform a myriad of processes in the body. There are many other minerals and vitamins that we need, but I’m finding that if we actually focus on the calcium, the vitamin A, and getting daily high quality traditional fats, most of everything else is basically taken care of.

So, if I am serious about designing my daily nutritional needs into my small back yard, perhaps an urban garden where half the world is living, how do we even begin to get it right? How can we be permaculture designers if we don’t at least try to match gardens up with human nutritional needs?

We’re going to give it a go! This is the brief:

We have an urban, low income family in a large city who are super resourceful, with common sense and basic handy man (and woman) skills, who are very keen to learn and would like a design for their 200sqm urban garden to produce as much as possible of the key elements of nutrition needed to keep their family of 2 adults and 2 children (aged 4 and 6) super healthy. They are concerned that high quality food is not easy to buy and is not affordable, and that it is likely that this situation will rapidly become worse. They have been given some money ($2,000) which they want to use to establish this garden, to enrich their lives in every way.

They live in a Mediterranean climate, cold in winter, maybe 20 frosts between 1-5 degrees celsius below, normally very hot and dry in the summer, with free draining sandy loam soils and a water table around 1m below the surface. Rainfall annual average, 1600mm.

They have every weekend to work in their garden, and in the summer, evenings as well. They dream that this garden can be their fun, their work, their play, their connection with nature, their connection with their own ancestors.

They also dream that the skills they use and the resources this garden might produce could enable and empower them to take the skills to their wider community.

Obviously there will be endless ways to do this. We’d love feedback and ideas from you all.

Design work (photos) from student work at our April 2012 Permaculture Design Course

How to test "Brix" levels using a refractometer
Use instructions inside case to calibrate refractometer.

When you pick your plant material for testing, pick a few pieces of leaf (not the fruit) from the 3rd leaf out from the middle of a few plants. (Be consistent, it will help to achieve meaningful readings.) Put these pieces of leaf in your hands and rub your hands together for 60 seconds to break up the cells in the leaves as much as possible. Your hands will start to get a green stain when the cells are broken down enough. When tissue is very damaged place in a garlic crusher and squeeze 1 drop of juice onto the refractometer plate. (The longer you rub, the higher the Brix reading, so it is important to be consistent. ) 

When you look through the lens you will see a scale from 0 upwards. If the line between the white and blue is very fuzzy, that is a sign that you have good available calcium levels. You can easily read the brix levels in the eye piece.

Either use our spreadsheet (overleaf) or design your own to keep a track of collected data. It takes a series of data collections to begin seeing patterns, don’t jump to conclusions after one test!

Understand that your brix readings will be affected by the time of day so try to always take them at a regular time each week. The best time is between 11:00am and 4:00pm. The readings at the end of the day will be higher because plants collect sugars in their leaves as they photosynthesis during sunlight. As the sun goes down around half of the sugars (containing the minerals) are sent back down to the roots to attract and feed the micro organisms in the soil.

High water levels in the soil affects brix readings, unless the brix is very high and very stable. Make a note of the month and if it has been very sunny or wet etc so you can see these patterns.

If you are getting very high and very low readings on the same plant at different times of the day it could be that the brix is unstable meaning you are getting there, but not quite there yet with your soil health. Consistent readings over 12-14 (leaf tests, not fruit ) means you are growing food capable of nourishing the cells of your body, and if the readings stay up after picking for a day or two then you have pretty stable brix which means the food holds it’s quality, and “shelf life” after picking, for longer.

Use the sheet included inside the refractometer case to see what are generally regarded as low, medium and high readings for individual crops. It tells you if it is a leaf or fruit test that you need to do.

I prefer to take readings on the day I do my foliar feeding so that I can retest an hour after foliar feeding to see if the foliar spray I used was beneficial to the plant. If it is, the brix goes up. Whatever makes the brix go up is what is missing, the limiting factor...very often calcium. After trialling a foliar spray on a few plants, then I may spray that over the entire crop or garden.

We find compost tea makes a huge difference to the overall health of the vege garden - you're effectively brewing up a batch of beneficial  microbes which will increaseplanthealth as well as help to combat viruses and disease. Remember your compost tea can only be as good as your compost. Compost must be aerobic, smell like the forest floor and be dense with minerals. Having the right minerals in the right relationship for your soil will make a world of a difference to the effectiveness of the tea.

Equipment
20 Litre Bucket
Fish Tank Aerator
stocking or bag to hold compost and castings

Ingredients
2 handfuls of good healthy compost,
1 handful worm castings (this contains humic acid)
1/8 Cup organic molasses
1 Tablespoon Oatmeal,
2 capfuls liquid seaweed

METHOD
Put the compost and castings and  into the stocking and tie securely, then add the other ingredients to the bucket. Add lukewarm water to fill bucket, mix well and aerate for 24 hours.Water down to make a 10% solution and apply to vege beds and plant leaves weekly or fortnightly..

Over the past 20 years it has become increasingly apparent that our heritage potatoes are deteriorating (far smaller crops from each potato planted with far more evidence of disease and pest issues), and since the introduction of the psyllid, (which brings a host of damaging viruses) the problem has dramatically worsened.

In the 2011 harvest season we harvested marbles 1-2cm diameter. We were unable to eat anything or sell the seed at this point. This was our national potato collection so it was a very serious situation.

On top of the pest and disease issue, or part of the reason for these issues, is the fact that our New Zealand soils are also now seriously de mineralised. Just as we humans can not maintain our health or the integrity of our DNA over generations if we do not feed our body well, the potatoes are not able to maintain the genetic strength they began with if we do not feed them the minerals from the rich soils they evolved with. 


It is many years since serious selection work has been done by home gardeners maintaining these lines, although in recent times there are several groups beginning that process again including Joseph Land’s work in the Hokianga where he grows a range of the Koanga Institute seed potatoes. Until now the Koanga Institute has not been in a position to improve our entire collection, our resources have simply been overstretched.

Since arriving here in Kotare Road we have decided it is the time to go for it and we have had a lot of support to do this job as explained later in this report.


Other people and organisations in NZ who hold serious potato collections (including industry growers) are endeavouring to get their collections cleaned up by ‘tissue culture’ in the lab, which is a way of taking the viruses out of the potatoes and beginning again with virus free seed potatoes. This is a costly process for each variety, and we do not believe this will strengthen the genetics of the potatoes. We have seen a kumara collection lost in this way, and the tissue cultured plants are vulnerable to all the viruses and psyllids that continue to exist in the environment, when they are planted again in the real world.


Here at the Koanga Institute, we believe that we must find an alternative solution, one that can be followed by home gardeners in New Zealand to strengthen and maintain the integrity of the plant's DNA. The science of epigenetics has taught us that

ENVIRONMENT DETERMINES GENETIC EXPRESSION


In this instance, this means that if we are able to supply all the required nutrients to the plants, and create a strong and healthy soil (environment) full of beneficial microbiology and minerals, then the strongest plants will adapt and survive, and we can select from these to maintain the lines. 

Our Potato Project this year (2012 harvest season), was supported by Environmental Fertilisers, who have designed a biological nutrient program, including solid and liquid fertilisers, and we followed their advice, adjusting things as required.

The fertiliser program is as follows:

1. Soak potatoes in compost tea for 12 hours then place in a bag with Koanga:Seedling Inoculant and shake to lightly cover potatoes with inoculant.
2. Prepare your potato trenches and apply to each meter of trench: 400g of EF:Nature’s Garden (fertiliser mix containing a wide range of nutrients balanced according to the principles of Dr Carey Reams) 200g of EF:Active Calcium (lime that has been composted with a carbon source to hold the calcium in the root zone), 200g of biochar.
3. Plant potatoes, cover them, then water with liquid biochar.
4. Spray fortnightly once they emerge with compost tea and on the in between weeks with EF:VegeFoliar three times, then change to EF:Fruit Foliar.
5. Last 3 foliar sprays before harvest, add EF:Manganese chelate which will strengthen the quality of the seed. Manganese is the element of life that gives seeds their strength!

We planted a trial plot of 200sq m, which means that we were able to plant approximately 20 plants of each cultivar in our collection.

With the help of a 1935 NZ Department of Agriculture Potato Growers booklet (142!) we kept a careful eye on each potato plant as they emerged and rogued (removed) almost all (couldn’t bear to remove everything, that would mean losing a line!) plants that appeared with crinkly leaves and or yellow blotches on the leaves. We also removed all plants that looked spindly and weak, compared to others. Some cultivars were noticeably weaker than others and we decided not to remove all plants where an entire line looked weak. We rogued the entire patch three times in the first three months of growth, finally just before flowers opened.

Once the flowers were open there was a marked increase in insect activity, with the insects potentially become disease vectors, so the aim of the rogueing is to remove all diseased plants before the insects come in and spread the disease.

We used our Koanga BioPesticide (entirely composed of beneficial microbes and fungi) to keep psyllids to a minimum and are very excited about the potential of this new product.

We also received information from Scott Lawson showing that a trial in the USA showed that erecting a black shade cloth fence around the potato patch works to keep out over 90% of psyllids as well.

We used our refractometer to test regularly before and after spraying to make sure we were actually doing what the plants needed, and we raised the brix of the potatoes to around 14 which is relatively high for potatoes.

At harvest we dug each plant separately, and weighed the tubers from each plant.

We selected our mother seed from the best tubers from the best producing plants from each cultivar, from the plants left after the rogueing.

We also photographed each variety for the website so you can all see what we have.  Below is the document for the individual results with comments and photos of each cultivar.

There were huge variations in the weights harvested from potatoes within cultivars. Some plants produced crops of over 3kg but with others only producing 0.1kg so the averages were very low this year compared to the harvests I was achieving 20 years ago

Over all we were very happy to see our potatoes produce good size edible tubers that we were able to save beautiful seed from. We didn’t eat them this year, but will do extensive taste tests next season.

Selecting our seed from the healthiest, heaviest producers should increase the weight of crops significantly over 3 years or so. (In Joseph Lands experience 3 years is the time it takes to increase production and vastly improve a line).

Our goal is to achieve production of high quality, good size potatoes, heavy crops of around 3-5kg per seed potato planted, and be able to provide seed from these potatoes to our members and the general public. We are one year into this project now!


We were supported in this project by several groups of people:

1. Nathan’s Garden crew from Uawa. helping with the double digging and harvesting.
2. Gerard’s Garden Crew from Raupunga, helping with the double digging and harvesting.
3. Environmental Fertilisers, designing the fertiliser and support.
4. Our members, through the project sponsorship to pay for the mulch and fertiliser required. This amounted to $40 per cultivar, and we achieved that! We will be asking for sponsorship for the 2013 harvest season, where our trial will be larger because we have had several new lines of old cultivars sent to us recently.

Key Successes and Understandings Gained from the Trial:

1. We went from diseased marbles to crops of healthy looking potatoes that we were able to save good seed from.
2. The fertiliser program definitely felt like a huge part of the creating this progress, we certainly watched the brix levels go up, as we fed the plants.
3. The tough rogueing of diseased plants is a key part of cultivar improvement, and was very hard to do when we were dealing with such small numbers of endangered potato.
4. Selection of the best potatoes (biggest potatoes from the heaviest producing plants) is a key part of cultivar improvement.
5. Planting early ( before mid September, but preferably in late July or August) is key to avoiding psyllid as much as possible.
6. Using either a 80cm black shade cloth fence around potatoes or Koanga Bio Pesticide or both will help keep psyllid numbers very low, other options could include using a special diatomaceous earth spray Koanga Psyllid Solution, and also Neem oil.
7. Karoro, Whataroa, Urenika and Kowiniwini have been or standard best choices for a few years now out of this collection as well as Pink and Yellow Fir, but we were very excited to see a few more very promising lines showing up. I was especially excited by Whanaako, Stewart Island, and Wai –iti, and also Catriona.
8. We understand based on the principles of epigenetics that the nutritional program we used, and the selection we did this past season will mean next years results will also be affected in a positive way by that. As we continue with the program the effects should compound and produce healthier and healthier plants and larger crops.

Piece of the Puzzle from Bill Mollison

Finally, Bill Mollison told a group of us a story whilst at the permaculture Convergence in Jordan last Spring about potatoes, and I like it. We’ve saved all our aerial seed this season from our trial patch potatoes so we can incorporate his observations into our management and growing of potatoes next season!

On his visits to Peru to learn about potato production and potatoes in general (Bill is a potato fanatic, years ago when he stayed with us I realised the extent of his love affair with potatoes when I saw what he actually eats – mainly meat and potatoes – but he is also partial to eel), Bill noticed that when the farmers go up the mountains to take care of their potatoes, they not only take care of those they have planted, they also take special notice of the wild ones that grow all around their gardens. When they see particularly healthy looking wild potato plants, they mark them, and harvest those later when they are ready. They then choose the healthiest wild plants that had the best crops of potatoes, and keep some of those each year to plant in with their cultivated potatoes the following year.

The idea is that when the seedlings flower the following year they will be flowering at the same time as all those in the cultivated field ad they will spread their strength and vigour to the cultivated plants via the pollen that is carried by the insects that love to visit the flowers. Apparently the constant cross fertilisation of the wild strong plants and the cultivated plants helps keep the cultivated plants vigorous, strong and healthy!!

Potato Trial 2012-13 Season

We will be repeating the potato trial again next season, and will again be looking for sponsors for each cultivar, as you can see on our website. Each person who sponsors a potato will receive a small packet of seeds from the aerial seed heads from this past seasons crop, so you too can grow your own seedlings to keep your potato seed strong. Becoming a potato sponsor helps us to to this sort of work to keep our heritage food plants strong and available to all for the long haul, we welcome your participation!

Potato & Tomato Nutrition Pack Special

We are hoping that lots of you will learn to improve and save your own potato seed after reading this and we are offering this special nutrition pack designed for potatoes and tomatoes, based on the recipe given us by Grant from Environmental Fertilisers. See the Koanga Gardens catalogue, or website to order or for more details. We would also recommend you do regular compost tea applications as we did, as explained above.


Download the report on how each cultivar performed from our website.

Directions for Planting and Growing

Plant your potatoes 30cm part in rows 60cm apart as early in Spring as possible to avoid the psyllid bugs, before mid-September is best. If you have a psyllid free area to plant them we suggest you erect a 80cm high black shade cloth fence around the potato patch. This has been proven to prevent almost all psyllids entering. We suggest you use either Koanga Psyllid Solution or our BioPesticide for control.

The fertiliser program is as follows:

1. Soak potatoes in compost tea (or organic cow manure slurry, or a bucket of water with some high quality compost mixed into it along with a little sugar or honey or molassus, or a little vermicast, in the water) for 12 hours then place in a bag with Seedling Innoculant and shake to lightly cover potatoes with inoculant.
2. Prepare your potato trenches and apply to each 1 metre of trench: 400g of Potato & Tomato Feast.  Each bed will have two rows of potatoes (or tomatoes) so you will have 200g of Potato Tomato Feast left over to run over the surface of your bed once you have covered the tubers.
3. Plant potatoes, cover them, sprinkle remaining Potato & Tomato Feast above rows of potatoes, then water with liquid Activated Carbon (biochar).
4. Spray fortnightly once they emerge with EF:VegeFoliar three times, then change to EF:Fruit Foliar.
5. Spray weekly or as often as you feel you need with BioPesticide to prevent blight, psyllid and all other potential disease and pest problems.

Continue the rogueing program as suggested on our potato trial report.

The garden we put in last Spring at Kotare Village is the 5th huge garden I have planted since leaving Kaiwaka 4 1/2 years ago.

I have continued growing much of our own food and over half the seeds sold by the Institute during that time, and I have had a range of soil types and situations to deal with! I have been totally committed to absolutely doing my best to produce high brix food/ seeds.I have never had compost to greet me when I arrived other than the rule I made myself, that each time I shifted I took a heap with me to the next place and I did that for every shift. I have had to find fast short term solutions to providing the right minerals in the right relationships.

I have been working with Grant from Environmental Fertilisers and using his products since before leaving Kaiwaka, and I now feel as though I pretty much have it sorted. Environmental Fertilisers have an amazing dedication to doing the absolute best they can for our soil, our health and carbon sequestration on as large a scale as they can. They are a small family business who base their recipes not only on the science of Dr Carey Reams and others, but also on Grant’s 20 plus years working with New Zealand soils, and many other inspired people.

I have learned some hard lessons and I’d like to share those so that you don’t have to learn them the same way I did...

The recipe we use is as follows per sq m of garden bed , forked into the top 5-10cm before planting seedlings

Paramagnetic Rock Dust    400 gms ( once only)

Activated Carbon (Biochar)  400gms ( once oly)

EF:Nature's Garden              400gms

EF:Active Calcium                  200gms

After seedlings are planted we sprinkle 100 gms of EF:Nature'sGarden over each sq m then we water the seedlings in with a watering can or two containing EF:FishPlus at 100 mls per 10 litres of water in the watering can.

If our crop is a heavy feeder we will apply 100 gms per sq m each month for the following 3 months.

We will then apply a weekly foliar spray of EF:VegeFoliar for a month or so then switch to EF:FruitSeed Foliar until harvest, unless thecrop is a heavy feeding leaf crop and then we just contnue with the EF GrowthFoliar.

All of that product costs $6:36 per sq m.

This level of applying this particular fertilser will mean you are sequestering carbon, growing Nutrient Dense food and you don't have to keep doing it forever.

If you also add Compost Minerals and Microbes to your comoost heap whilst growing your first seasons garden, you will have high brix compost for your second years' garden so you will be able to plant your garden without the need to add all the minerals you added the first year.

I would continue with the foliar feeding program, and testing the brix levels until I know my vegetables are high brix, over 16 or so.

We have been figuring this recipe out for some years now and the following are some things worth keeping in mind...

• Firstly, there seems to be some kind of threshold with the minerals that you have to reach for things to work at all. i.e. if we take the attitude that this is expensive fertiliser and only put on half as much as recommended, you will possibly get no result at all, making it even more expensive. The application rates that I have found to work, in all cases, is about the same, and this is what we put on the bags we sell. I have found however that in occasional situations it requires more applications and higher quantities to kick things off.
• Secondly, all the various bits are critical - it’s not just the EF Nature’s Garden, but also the EF Fish Plus applied in a watering can to the soil and roots at planting time that actually kicks things off. This form of liquid fish is complexed to a carbon source, so does not burn up soil carbon or wash away fast like other forms of liquid fish. All of the soils I have worked in produced better results when I added as a one off an extra dose of calcium also complexed to a carbon source: EF Active Calcium
• If your crop is a gross feeder, i.e. tomatoes, pumpkins (all curcurbits), corn, brassicas etc., then it will also make a big difference if you add another 100g per square metre monthly for 3 months after planting.

With all crops I found the EF Growth Foliar spray will bring the brix’s up further which means you have higher brix material for your next compost heap as well as knowing that you are getting higher and higher quality food. Bob and I have just planted our own vegetable garden - 200 square metres of double dug beds - and we have used all of the above as well as biochar (Activated Carbon) and paramagnetic rock dust. Both of these things are once only applications, although we will continue to make biochar and add this to our compost heaps. All this adds up to a lot of additives to the garden. It also basically takes us to a place where we can go from veges not doing well at all with a brix of 3 or 4 to a brix of well over 12 in 6 months. I had oats up to a brix of 23 over Winter with this regime. I’m also adding Compost Minerals and Microbes to my compost heap during these 6 months so that at the end of 1 year I will have a garden that is growing high brix veges and I will have compost that will do possibly all of the feeding from then on. I believe that is very good value when we consider that this is our future health insurance, and it is a once off that adds so much value to our lives in so many ways.

My strategies from now on will be:

• to grow oats and lupins as Winter carbon crops (the oats seem to have incredible ability to extract both calcium and phosphate from the soil that is unavailable to the vege roots),
• add all my burnt animal bones to the compost heap
• as well as home made biochar,
• and as much seaweed as I can collect.
• I am also growing a patch of alfalfa and comfrey specifically for recycling minerals from the bottom of our housesite back through the heap.
• I will also continue with the practice of adding agnihotra to the compost.
• I’m sure I’ll continue learning.

I’m pretty excited about the potential benefits of biochar in the ground. Albert Bates’ book The Biochar Solution is a great resource if you’re keen to learn more. In my conversations with Albert at IPC10 in Jordan he confirmed my feeling that the incredible story of the Terra Preta soils of the Amazon were built up by ordinary people like us who were gardeners, foragers, meat eaters, and farmers who were simply composting all of their waste - animal bones, burnt animal and fish bones, ash, all vegetative waste etc. Everything in their lives they did not use or eat was composted or thrown into piles around their gardens and fields. The thing that made these soils so extra special was that they clicked onto the fact that black soils were building up faster in areas where there was more charcoal going into the mix. The thing that created these very deep black soils was the mix of humus and biochar. The biochar is not biologically active but is very, very stable, and when working together with humus or biologically active carbon, they have a synchronicity of their own and build soil relatively fast. They actually learned how to make charcoal and ensure they added it to the mix in greater quantities than they had been previously.

We can do that now by cooking on stoves that make charcoal as they cook our food or heat our spaces, or we can upskill ourselves and make our own charcoal in the back yard, using tree prunings etc. I feel as though I have it sussed using bought products, however this is obviously a short term solution, and now that we’ve been here for one year we have a lot of other systems being set up. I plan to be off these bought inputs very soon, and I’ll share in detail with you in the next catalogue all the systems we have put in place to create far more sustainable systems that are easy for all.

It is not intended to be just about product, but that is part of it. We'd love to hear about how you are getting your brix's up using home made solutions and we wil lshare ours as we can too. i know there are several groups of gardeners getting together to learn  to grow high brix food, we'd love to hear from you too. Go for it!!!

The following discussion was originally an email exchange between myself and Gail Aiken, and I think it may help many of you get a better feel for what we are talking about and some of the issues. Grant Paton, from Environmental Fertilisers, has also made comments throughout. - Kay Baxter

Gail
I wanted to ask your advice about getting brix readings up. I've been reading your booklet which is really good, & nourishment home grown but just wanted to run stuff by you too. When I prepared the beds I put EFNano cal & EFNatures Garden on. I took brix today & they are still low. Between 6 & 10 for the various crops I took readings for (parsnips, broad beans, tree onions, multiplyling leeks). Not sure what to do now. Should I top dress with some more EFNano cal & see if that helps? I've run out of Natures Garden and was trying to decide whether to order more. Grant reckons the EFNatures Garden plus is better but can't be certified organic - not the be all & end all I know but can be a useful guide as to whether the ingredients are okay. Any views on that? Or,  as I've already used Active calcium & Natures Garden should I get some of the foliar feed?
Any thoughts or suggestions gratefully received!! I'm feeling a bit demoralised by it all so anything should help.

Kay
Re the Brix's. first of all the whole 'organic' thing is very difficult. My understanding now is that 'organic' does not necessarily mean anything  in terms of whether that fert will feed the plantsin a way that grows high brix crops and improve the soil. They could be or not, we have no way of knowing unless we use a refractometer or other more expensive tests.. If you believe that as Beddoe explains, there are the 'laws of nature', and  that that is essentially how plants grow from energy into matter, and that they use certain minerals in certain relationships, and can only grow as those minerals are available in the right relationships, then any fertilser that is made that does not use this as a guideline or guiding principle is often useless for the plants, you can be  putting on expensive product that may  not raise the brix and we also see from understanding the principles that you only raise the brix when you are working with nature, so it also means you are improving the soil. I essentially saw that all my organic methods in Kaiwaka cost me lots in terms of energy and input and were misguided…. mostly, not only a waste of time and energy but actually destructive of  soil growth and  plant health.

Grant says that if you buy the certified versions of his fertilsers they are still just as expensive and only 30-40% as effective as his non organic versions. They are not able to certify them when they use the 'laws of nature' a la Reams, Beddoe etc. I have come to believe my refractometer rather than trust ‘certified’ products. Personally I don't think any of the bought products are sustainable however we can't create closed systems or sustainable systems until we bring in the right minerals in the right relationships so we have to begin somehow to sort the demineralised , lifeless soils that we have created first, then look at how we can close the circle next.
I have found it really hard to choose between certified organic and something that works way better too, but I’m afraid the ‘soil health’ and ‘human health’ is more critical than certified organic at this stage for me. The certification agencies have some things to sort out as far as I'm concerned and if they can't face that they will probably be left behind, Biological agriculture will just take over as it already is in many places around the world. The systems have to be quantifiably improving soil health, plant health and human health and ‘certified organic’ does not do that.
Don't get disheartened, it has been a really difficult Spring, we are all struggling right now with our Brix's, mainly because of the cold wet weather, as it gets warmer, and growth becomes stronger you will get a better picture. Are you doing weekly readings.? 10 is a really good brix for this time of the year for soil that has just gone into biological agriculture production. It takes a while, I can see that, and speeding it up too much can cause other problems. You’ll just have to test a small area once it is warm by adding more EFNano-Cal to see if it raises the brix, and also EFNatures-Garden, I would only add that once more after planting then go to foliar feeding every week or 10 days or before and after full moon. I use 3 foliars EFGrowth EFBio-Cal , and EFFruit. I alternate the EFBio-Cal with whichever is appropriate of the other two depending on age of plant, and I’m working hard to do a really good job of getting the minerals into the compost heaps so that I can stop buying product as soon as I get the Brix's up over probably around 16, and other systems are in place..I think the main thing is not the actual Brix's at this stage but that you track them and see that they are slowly going up and that you learn how to test and what the plants respond to. My guess is that your soil will respond well to all the calcium inputs first as for  most of us, and then the phosphate which is in  the EFNature's-Garden.
I found that the foliars make a huge difference to Brix's once the plants are up and growing, so long as you test and get the right sprays  on.

Grant-
Just to clarify a few points, what we see out in the growing arena is this massive shortage of plant available calcium and phophorus along with trace element shortages and then mineral ratios [eg Ca:Mg]  are all too hell.
This is then further complicated by a short fall in the soil HUMUS fraction [not the organic matter fraction], humus allows the storage of water and thereby allows electrical energy to flow.
So hence the need to apply minerals and energy to the soil to grow the present crop, the long term goal is to minimize or even illiminate these external mineral inputs. However the problem is massive and I don’t think people realize how bad the soil issues are.
I use the NGF pre planting and then may side dress things like potatoes 2-3 times during the season and also use additional mulches [carbon] for water retention and fresh carbon for the soil microbes, this also helps chelate the minerals.
Foliar feeding is used to aid the plant directly and to manipulate energy levels in the plant, ie swinging from reproductive to vegetative modes, by doing this we can get crops harvested earlier as they test higher in sugar and are getting a premium for early produce e.g- last year one of our kiwifruit growers generated an additional $150 000 [4ha] in premiums from adopting this growing approach, so the $3000 he spent on foliar feeding netted him $147 000. [ So foliar feeding = high drymatter, high sugar, bigger size = premium payment]

Certified organics only guarantees no ….cides products on the produce, there is no gurantee of food quality, ive seen organic produce rotting like conventional produce, Why do things rot = low cell wall strength = low colloidal calcium. And the proteins in the produce are simple like glutamine which is basically insect food, so the plant didn’t have the reserve energy to create complex carbohydrates and complex proteins [amino acids], generally low phosphorus [the mineral usher]
The other question to ask is, if I use a mineral salt [e.g Magnesium Sulphate or Epsom Salts and soil microbes eat this up like candy and we get a positive response from a plant [lets call this measurement Brix], then this was the correct treatment, however then we have BIO-GRO [which don’t for get this is now a rule book written by humans of which half of them don’t even have a veggie garden or grow anything, and now they are telling us and natures what to do…………cant you see the problem now.]

It starts to become real complex once you now involve the FDA [americam federal department of agriculture], you then need to look at the names of the people sitting on these company boards and what investments they hold in other chemical companies.

Natures Garden Fert Plus has bio-rocket in it, so this will never be able to get certification on it, what I find interesting is that this is clean chemistry [photosynthesis has chemical reactions in it] and doesn’t have any of the heavy metals that some RPRs and composts carry, but you are allowed to apply as much of this material as you wish from Bio-Gro point of view. Like our new foliar Humus Builder. Pure clean chemistry and I can use this to increase the magnetic energy field and double the thickness of a leaf, thereby increasing solar energy collection and ultimately sugar production, it also allows a plant to draw more water from the atmosphere and deep down in the soil, enhancing drought tolerance. But I cant get this certified !!!!

Gail
Thanks for that - your response was really useful. In terms of brix readings I've been very hit & miss with it (mostly miss!) but have now sorted things out so hopefully I will take weekly readings from now on. Anyway - I just started that process so will keep on with it.

Kay
It's really important to test regularly at the same time of the day

Gail
I still have some queries about the certification part though. I really get that organics doesn't mean much in terms of nutrient density because you can easily be organic without even looking at the mineral balance to any great degree & that the soil tests they use are flawed & also that large scale organics isn't much better than large scale non-organics & mainly just avoids the poisons. But I still feel I need a deeper answer about what is it in the Natures Garden Plus mix that can't be certified. I did ask Grant this direct too & got a good response although it didn't really answer my question. I suppose I see organic certification as a way of buying something that I assume (although maybe naively as I agree that the systems are flawed):

• hasn't  got poisons in it (the 'cides' that Grant talks about - insecticides, pesticides etc)
• hasn't got GE material in it,
• isn't harmful to the environment in the way it was extracted, 
• isn't harmful to the environment when used.

Kay
I totally agree with you and I'm so glad that you're able to write in such a clear way, the above 4 points are the guts of what we are all wanting, I think that Grant would say that most people don't realise how harmful many organic ferts can be when they don't have the right minerals in the right relationships in them, there are a lot of problems that can and do occur and this  is not widely understood (what I did in my home garden in Kaiwaka was a good example I'm sorry to day) . I see his fertilser and all Biological fertilsers made following the principles of Reams, Beddoe, Anderson, etc  as being less harmful to the environment  because they have been made with an understanding of the 'Laws of Nature.', and work within that framework , however I also see that point 3 above is where the Biological Agriculture companies fall down.

They are using many products (and so are organic companies too) that are mined and are unsustainable, for various reasons. Grant has an answer to that too. My understanding of the answer is that our soils over much the earth have been demineralised to such an extent that we have to do something radical to urgently sequester the carbon that been released from the soil, back into the soil, and that the only way known to us right at this point to do it fast enough to save life on earth as we know it is to use all of our knowledge and go for it. The bits of the equation that are unsustainable, and include mining, are seen as being short term and not needed once the mineral level is built up and our plants are again able to photosynthsise more efficiently and effectively, as high brix plants can, and then bring in their minerals from the atmosphere. Basically these people are saying that we have to lift our game to a certain point ( by game I mean we have to improve the soils so that our plants are far higher brix) and at that point our plants are then able to, through their leaves, extract almost everything they need from the atmopshere. In order to do that they have to have the right soil conditions first. Those conditions used to exist on earth, but we have ruined them one way or another. I might have this wrong but I will check all this with Grant.

Gail
I suppose what I'm trying to get to is an understanding of what it is in the product that can't be certified so that I'm sure I'm happy with it. I've just been re-reading Grant's answer to my original question about why Natures Garden plus can't be certified. He said of the 10% of ingredients that can't be certified.
“The basic ingredients are EF Bio-Rocket, its basically clean chemistry and plants respond to it if soils are very low in ERGs, the reason is that the carbon is lost from the soil so the nitrogen can not be held in the soil and therefore most minerals then are no long electrically bound in the soil by either carbon or nitrogen. ! “
I didn't understand exactly what he meant at the time but re-reading it I'm assuming he means that the ingredients of Bio-Rocket are chemicals that can't be certified because they are chemicals. Is this your understanding too?

Kay
Yes I think he's taken urea which is the industrial nitrogen (unsustainable aweful when used in isolation) and found a clever way to chemically join it to carbon so that it is held in the soil and only released to plant roots as needed. For all the other minerals in EFNature's-Garden to be used effectively by the plants they must also have the right amount of nitrogen in relations to the other minerals a la the Laws of nature as in Beddoe's book. Most of us don't have easy access to adequate amounts of an organic natural source of nitrogen chemically bound to carbon so that it stays where it's needed and supports plant growth by being available as needed in relation to all the other minerals.

Grant
Just a small point, we don’t use synthetic UREA or put it in NGF plus, I prefer to use Calcium-Nitrate [20% Water Soluble Calcium and 15% Nitrate-Nitrogen]bound up with humic acid, it has a double vegetative energy field in it, really is magic stuff, we are working on an organic version of it, but it maybe some time away.

Gail
It might seem as if I'm making heavy weather of this and I do really get the broader stuff but it seems important that I'm very clear about the specifics so that I know why the 10% uncertifiable stuff can't be certified so I can explain it & be sure that I'm happy with it.

Kay
I don't think this is 'heavy work', it is exactly what we need to find a way to explain,  the difference between ‘Biological agriculture’ and ‘organics’ and this is the conversation we need to have. I think it will help a lot of people.

Gail
I think in writing this I've almost answered my own question although more clarity about what the clean chemistry actually is would probably be helpful. I'd also still be interested in your comments too. It feels like it might be helpful if Grant could explain it in easily understandable terms but in a way he's happy with that doesn't give away too much detail in terms of his business. For me (& I'm sure for others too) it needs to be more than "organics isn't good enough" & "trust me, I'm into biological production so the ingredients are okay". Not that I don't trust the integrity of the company, I do, and not that Grant didn't explain - just took me a while to get it - but I need to be able to be very clear when explaining to people about what i use & why so think i still need a little bit more. (He has done that above I think)

The other thing I'm still struggling with a bit is the foliar feeding. I've always believed in growing the soil & that any liquid or foliar feed was just a supplement or boost & not instead of. Although the aim here is to build the soil the EF foliar feeds seem more than just a boost & I'm not clear about how they contribute to soil health. Are they just a fast track way of getting the plant health up while waiting for the soil to catch up as it takes longer. Also I suppose they mean that if you get the mineral levels up in the plants then any waste that goes back into the soil is more minerally balanced. Any other thoughts on that?

Kay
Yes I agree, it does not come naturally to get into using a back pack sprayer. I have learned though that the fastest way to grow biologically active carbon (humus) ....and that is what we have to do to get our systems back within a sustainable paradigm... is to
1. make excellent compost using all the right minerals in the right relationships, so we can grow high brix plants and
2.use every reasonable (we all have to decide what we consider reasonable and this is just what you are doing here)  technique we can to raise the brix of our plants because the higher the brix the more roots plants grow, the faster we can sequester carbon, and grow our own humus and minerallly balanced biologically active soil. Foliar feeding speeds up the whole process hugely from what I've seen. Once we can grow brix 16-20 plants without foliar feeding then we won't need to do it any more, the plants will be pulling in what they need from the atmosphere themselves, and pumpimh half of this back down for the microbes each night etc etc .  Foliar feeding is like part of a kick start program which may also include some other unsustainable practices in the short term. Medium to long term, using all the strategies in my Growing Nutrient Dense Food brochure I believe we can close the circle, in many ways. I don't believe we can easily  achieve that at this point in time 'organic' methods.
We're all learning, and the faster we can learn and share the info the more help we can be to others, and the whole!.

                                               (The basic unit, minus the rocket stove and piping)

So first to some basic principles. Contrary to what your mothers  may have told you, your father wasn't so bad a cook he could burn water, as you can't get it over 100deg c as long as there is water in the pot. The boiling water effectively dissipates the heat energy as quickly as you can put it in. If however, we raise the pressure by putting the water in a container and seal it then we raise the boiling point of the water. Some of you by now are saying "congratulations you've just described a pressure cooker" nods to you, that's exactly what I'm getting at. As every schoolchild knows, water boils at 100 deg c but remember there is the caveat " at sea level"  if we raise the pressure above that then the temperature at which the water boils will also rise. Correspondingly lower the pressure and water boils at a lower temperature. For instance at the top of mount Everest water boils at approx 69 deg c. Okay, now hold that thought while we forge on with the water heater design.

A little context,  PRI Australia  where I worked for the last two years had a need to heat water for up to 55 people per night during their PDC courses. Obviously anything we did should showcase appropriate technology while being easy to use and live with. Solar was considered but a unit to heat that much water was both a huge undertaking and very expensive if we were to purchase it. A compost shower had been tried but issues of volume and heat transfer made it  inappropriate and worse, cold. Since my days as an intern at PRI  I had been keen to try some ideas I had  and so put forward an evil plan to build a wood powered hot water system. The power unit so to speak would be a rocket stove and this would In turn heat a drum of water positioned above it.

Now for the details, I arranged the drum ( an  old 180 litre  stainless hot water system tank ) on its side above the rocket stove which in this instance is built of old red house bricks for the feed tube and burn tunnel, while the heat riser was an old stainless flue pipe insulated with perlite, this came up to within 50 mm of the hot water tank and towards one end.

(The shell of the unit showing the 200ltr drums and the end of the hot water tank just visible)

Around the hot water tank I arranged a cylinder made of two 200l drums welded together with the ends cut off. This basically made a cover around the hot water tank that had a gap of approx 50 mm all the way .This is where hot combustion gasses, passing out of the end of the heat riser travel around the hot water tank and give up heat to the tank. As the gases give up their heat they cool and are displaced downwards and eventually pushed out of a hole low on the end of the outer cover. To stop heat passing out of the outer cover we then wrapped the 200 l drums in recycled glass wool insulation and then some old corrugated iron around that to keep the rain out and everything tidy.

 (An end view showing the outer corrugated iron layer, the insulation layer and the inner 200ltr drum with  the end of the hot water tank visible through the hole)

So the gas path is easy. It's the water part of the system that has to be gotten right or things could get ugly.
So let's go back to our hot water tank , we plumb in a cold water inlet from a pressurised source ( mains or tank) with a tap and we use this to fill the tank . At the top of the tank we have an outlet, so  when we open  the tap  water fills the tank and overflows  out the outlet . We shut off the tap, the tank is now full of water. If you want a simple system to fill a bath or for hot water for washing clothes this would be okay , but remember that because we have no tap on the end of the outlet we rely on the overflow for the hot water so turning the inlet tap off will not immediately shut off the overflow which will continue for a while longer, also if the water boils in the tank you can have hot water and steam slugging out the overflow pipe.

To get a system that supplies hot water on demand means we have to do a few more things.  We take a coil of copper pipe (13mm x 18 m long) and put it inside the hot water tank. In my case I  cut a small hole in the tank and " wound " the coil in. Each end of the coil then projects out each end of the hot water tank, in the tank I used  there were holes already there for the old connections  so I  passed the pipe through and silver soldered it in place and then welded back in the bit I had cut out to get the coil in. If you don't have welding skills don't despair , all this work can be done at your local welding shop and should be comparatively quick and cheap. Another variation is to use an old clip top 200 l drum sitting upright and pass all the fittings through the lid and use compression fittings so no welding, but be warned the drum will rust out eventually ( probably two or three years).

Okay let's recap, we have a drum, it has a pressurised pipe leading into it with a tap, we have an outlet or overflow, we open the tap the drum will fill and overflow out the outlet. We have a copper pipe inside the tank, where the copper pipe goes through the walls of the tank it is soldered in place so water in the tank will not leak out. The water in the  copper pipe but does not mix with the water in the tank.

Now we connect the copper pipe to the drum fill pipe but we do this before the tap. The other end of the copper pipe then goes to your end use be it shower or sink or whatever and there is a tap on that end. This means when we open  the shower hot tap, hey presto  water automatically flows.
Now is the time to remember our  pressure cooker example. The water In the  tank is not pressurised or able to be pressurised because it's open at the overflow, It will boil at 100 deg c at sea level. The water in the copper pipe comes very near to the temperature of the water in the tank because copper is an excellent conductor and because of the length of the copper pipe  however its pressurised because it comes either from a tank or mains. We know because of our earlier discussion that this means it will have a higher boiling point than the water in the tank. This means that you can never boil the water in the copper pipe. So we now have a system that can't go boom.

Now a couple of tips, you will have to periodically (weekly or so) open the drum fill tap to top up the drum as expansion and evaporation will continually lower the level in the drum. You could set up an external float system to keep the drum topped up  but it's more complexity and I haven't bothered. How often you fire the system depends entirely on your usage. The PRI system was fired once in the morning to top up heat lost during the night and to cover the small number of people that preferred  morning showers and again in the evening beginning an hour or so before showers with people throwing the odd stick in as they came. The initial fire up of the system took 180 l of water to boiling in just over an hour and consumed approx 4 kilos of scrap timber.

A few words of caution, there are home built  wood powered systems  around using complete  old hot water tanks  but I cannot recommend using these if the system depends on the original safety valve. A wood fire is very hard to precisely regulate so invariably at some stage the water in the tank will boil.  Electric or gas powered systems are designed with thermostats that precisely regulate the water temperature, the safety valves on these  are there purely for if the thermostat has failed which will allow the water to boil. The safety valve works two ways , over pressure and over temperature, it is designed to fail ( yes fail) if either of these parameters are breached , once this happens it will leak, in a pressurised system this means it will dribble  out water non stop till some smarty pants comes along and blocks it which then converts it into a bomb. So if you have one of these systems your literally dicing with death.

Contrast this with the PRI system that has no valves to fail and has been designed so that it pretty much would require a failure of the laws of physics for the system to get to an explosive state. If you require even more safety and frankly I haven't bothered because the laws of physics seem quite stable at the moment, you can arrange things so the overflow outlet is  directed towards the rocket stove inlet (not directly above of course) so that if and when the water boils steam blows into the rocket stove putting the fire out.

On my next post I'll be talking about how we can reduce the energy needed to heat the water by as much as 30 %. Hint, what happens to the hot water after we spend so much time and effort  getting it up to temperature?

Tim Barker is teaching workshops at Koanga. Learn more about rocket stoves, natural building and appopriate technology and get some practical experience at our Autumn Internship and our Appropriate Technology Workshop. Book now for early bird discount!

The appropriate part is generally covered by the following:

it is human centered and human scaled.

it is easily replicable and understandable.

it focuses on locally available resources

it tends to be labour intensive but energy efficient.

In less developed countries, appropriate technology is generally centered around small scale economic development (eleviation of poverty) and health, while in more developed nations, it tends to center around environmental concerns.

As a case in point, take wood cooking fires, something like 2 million people  (mainly women and children) die each year from diseases directly attributable to the inhalation of smoke from cooking fires, vast numbers of trees are chopped down in areas that are already suffering from deforestation and one of the leading contributing factors for rape in rural areas is women searching for firewood in remote spots.

The development of simple, efficient, wood burning stoves addresses all these issues. Efficient combustion means no smoke, less wood required, reduced risk getting wood, as less distance covered, and less time wasted. All this leads to improved quality of live and less environmental degredation, it's win/win all the way.

Flip this over to the first world and we see the focus shifts when using these wood stoves to environmental concerns of buring less wood, being carbon neutral, and generally being perceived to be more "green."  While some of the perceived needs and motivations of these two perspectives are different, generally the methods are about using local resources in simple technologies to achieve certain goals, be it less labour to collect wood or making great Pizza.

What we are exploring with our appropriate technology program is "real world" applications. The "problem" with many of the popular appropriate technologies is that the context and reasoning for them is often misguided and very often they simply haven't been designed and constructed in a way that makes them practical to use. A case in point is the popular backyard Cob oven, they consume large amounts of wood, burn inefficiently, take ages to get to heat, waste large amounts of that heat and consume quite a large amount of time and effort to construct. 

Being brutally honest, the context of a cob oven in a back yard is simply wrong. Originally, these ovens were lit every day and then used throughout the day with each use using the lower grade heat as the oven cooled, the next day the oven would still be warm so less energy is required to get it back up to heat. This is the correct context for a cob oven, not fire it up once every week or two weeks just to cook three Pizzas. Don't get me wrong, I think cob oven food is amazing but lets not fool ourselves into thinking we're being "green," cooking with them in the context of our back yards. Here at The Koanga Institute, we've taken a different tack and that is recycling old electric or gas  ovens that would be destined for landfill and converted them with the use of simple materials into wood burners that use very little wood, burn cleanly, cook beautifully and are durable and easy to use while taking much less time and energy to construct.

In the context of natural systems energy, (from the sun) follows a linear path slowly degrading as it passes through an ecosystem, while resources (nutrients, minerals, etc) generally cycle around pretty much continuously; it's sustainable.

In the context of the current industrial system and indeed the operating system of the modern world, the short one-off abundance of fossil fuels has allowed us to develop a system that consumes vast amounts of energy (acting as though it were limitless) while taking resources and treating them in an entirely non-cyclic fashion turning them into waste.

What we all need to do, and what we are attempting to do at the Koanga Institute, is take the  big picture, a holistic view of  all our actions informed by an ethical framework.

1. We need a simplification of our material needs.
2. Whatever we do, we do having considered the respectful integrated use of the four fundamental ecosystem processes (the water cycle ,the mineral cycle, energy flow, and community dynamics - Allan Savory/holistic managment).
3. We do all this in the context of developing resilient local communities.

Taking all the above into account, our major goals are those technologies dealing with:
-  Energy usage
-  Nutrition
-  Shelter
-  Community

With our ongoing blog, we will be discussing various technologies, the links between technology and culture, future directions and any links to others doing similar interesting stuff. We hope to do all of this while remaining grounded in the fact that we will make mistakes and have disappointments, but that's half the fun, and as a wise man once said "if you ain't making mistakes you ain't learning."

Tim Barker, Bob Corker Nov 2012
Appropriate Technology Workshop - Sign up now, spaces are limited.

On my first design I was prepared, even expecting to have to modify things to get it to work properly. One fundamental question I had was how small the rocket oven cross section could be and still do the job.

I consciously made the decision to start with the smallest cross section I thought would work which just happened to coincide with some square section steel I had lying around. This was 90 mm square ( 3.5 inches). The plan was then to work my way up in size as needed. It's a good idea and simplifies construction if you keep the cross section constant all the way through the rocket stove part of the design ( feed tube ,burn tunnel ,heat riser) this reduces turbulence  and restrictions where you don't want them.

Now the fundamental concept of a rocket stove is that you want to get complete combustion of the fuel before you even think about using the heat generated, so it's important to insulate the feed tube ,burn tunnel and heat riser. In my first stove I used perlite and or vermiculite, these are readily available from gardening shops and are used as water retaining additives but being mineral based and light also make very good high temperature insulators. I then welded up my rocket stove elbow or J tube and made an enclosure out of blocks and old bits of tin to contain the perlite which I then poured in around the J tube, please note that the dust from perlite while not poisonous is irritating to the lungs so wear some sort of dust mask. On the latest design  I used a 50/50 mix of fine sawdust and clay and while not perfect is a good low tech compromise. In that design I put on a thin layer and then wrapped everything in some old chicken mesh and added another couple of layers to build up to about 50 mm thick all over, it then helps to let the mix dry out a bit before firing up. Of course you won't, so just like us  you will have a mini mount Vesuvius blowing steam, hot mud, and smoke out.

Anyway back to the burn tunnel size of 90 mm, much to my surprise this worked perfectly straight away. Two things though, the smaller the burn tunnel cross section the harder it is to light( until of course you get the hang of it) and the second was that for cooking those things that required a lot more heat than normal ( read pizza)  it was a bit slow . What didnt help either was that everyone was always opening  the door to check out how it works  so the poor old oven was struggling when we had pizza nights and people over. Where you are cooking for the average family these problem don't occur but I always said the next one would have a bigger tunnel. The current stove uses a 110 mm cross section  and this is more than enough fire power for anything you could wish to cook ( does great pizza).

You will notice in the diagram something called a diffuser plate, this is to even out the heat as it comes into the oven, without this the heat blasts up in a concentrated spot directly above the heat riser outlet so anything you have in the oven  will tend to burn on the bottom. In the institute stove the high tech diffuser is an old cake tin sitting on the lowest rack. My old stove used a small steel plate propped up on some rocks ( again high tech!).

As the institute oven is inside all combustion gasses leave via a flue than exits from the bottom edge of the oven. In theory having the exit low will conserve more heat in the oven . If the exit was on top the gasses would rush straight through, now we have some stratification of the heat with the cooler gasses being at the bottom. In the photo you can see our hi tech elbow to connect the oven to the pre existing flue from and old wood heater, this was constructed out of two home brew beer cans that just happened to be the perfect size. While its not been added yet I have plans to install an adjustable baffle plate as in the diagram so as to experiment with having more control of the gas flow rates through the oven. So far it seems that contrary to what you might think slowing the fire down by baffling it seems to increase the temperature of the oven while reducing wood consumption. It's my belief that this is due to a better air / fuel ration as the oven draws in more air than it needs generally and anything over what is needed for combustion cools the fire. This is born out by the fact that today I went out to take some photos of the oven and saw that the burn tunnel was nearly compleatly blocked with ash to the point that there was only a 25 mm gap at the top for the hot gasses to pass through. The interns hadn't cleaned the ash out of the oven for nearly 7 weeks !! . However talking to them about it, they reported that the oven seemed to be getting too hot lately . So it will be interesting to see what a baffle can achieve.

Home brew cans forming elbow , this is where we will put an adjustable baffle in future as an experiment

The horizontal part of the J elbow is the burn tunnel and it's good general policy to keep this as short as possible . The feed tube must be shorter than the heat riser or the rocket won't draw well  , generally the heat riser should be at least twice the length of the feed tube . The institute oven feed tube is 300 mm deep and the riser is 750 mm long so the ratio is good . Although I haven't tried it ,for an oven connected to a flue I don't think this ratio is as critical as the flue develops a lot of draw. This was apparent when we first tried the institute oven before the flue was connected and it drew well with the door open . When we connected it to the flue it smoked and carried on and I was starting to think oh oh . However a quick trip onto the roof and a long piece of pipe down the flue pushed out a giant plug of grasses left there from old birds nests. When we relit the oven it took off with a soft roar , music to my ears and drew a lot harder than previously with the door open and the flue disconnected .

A hot water cylinder to use the waste heat coming out the flue is a subject I'll get into more detail on in my next post as this is the basis of the hot water system I built for the PRI when I was there.

This is a teaser photo of my next post on hot water systems. All you pyromaniacs will just have to wait.

I used biochar last season and felt that, although the biochar suppliers said it had been charged (loaded with nutrients), it was not behaving as though it were feeding the plants. I felt it took all summer and into the winter before it stopped grabbing nutrients from the soil to charge itself. That is what biochar does. It is like a cupboard full of cupboards, full of more cupboards …and it just keeps loading up until they are all full and then the nutrients will become available to our plants’ roots. 

This season, I’ve put the biochar into a barrel and then filled the barrel with liquid fish. We left it to soak for a day or so, and then added it to our beds along with compost . These garden beds are facing right into the hot afternoon sun, and on a dry bank with very light, sandy soil. Up until now, I have been finding it quite hard to keep the beds moist, let alone the plants happy.  The compost alone did not do it, (not enough available perhaps) but adding the “charged” bio char created an instant difference! My seedlings stood right up, turned dark green and began growing within a day. The beds absorb more water when I water them, but they stay moist a lot longer and evenly moist all day. I’m definitely impressed with biochar as a soil amendment at this stage.

I’ve been working with biochar as a soil amendment in vege beds for 2 years now and I would  say that the key is to "charge" the biochar, even if it says it is already activated.  My recommendation is that you put 5 kgs of biochar into a bucket, and cover with either urine or liquid fish, or any other liquid feed such as liquid cow manure, and leave for 24 hours.

The biochar can then be spread over 5 sq m of garden bed.  The area you spread it over is arbitrary, you can spread it over more or less, and the effect will just be more or less. It seems you can’t over do it. I just suggest 5kgs of biochar over 5 sq m because that seemed to work very well in my garden, so it should be a good start for you as well.

Being able to make my own biochar with our fruit tree prunings or sawdust, which is freely available around here, will be the next step, and we’re not too far off because we have our first kiln operating already! Tim Barker, one of our Appropriate Technology tutors made Koanga Garden's very first batch of biochar last Friday.

In the meantime, if you want a large quantity, ½ a ton of biochar to dose an entire garden, it can be purchased directly from Environmental Fertilsers. We will be repacking and selling biochar in smaller quantities if you’d like to start out with a 5kg bag. Watch us on Facebook for an update of when 5kgs are available. 

My garden beds that had had biochar applied last spring, without the extra charging, did not respond until mid winter when I saw a huge difference in the brix. The brix of my oats grown as a carbon crop this past winter was 28!! The highest brix I’ve ever seen! I should have been drying the oats and grinding and selling them as a food supplement at that quality rather than making compost with it, which is of course what I did!

It is very exciting to be getting food crops up into the high brix levels where we know we are eating food that has complex sugars, (brix over 12)  complete proteins (higher again) and plant lipids (higher again) and also essential oils (higher again). Low brix crops have none of those. Not only that, but at high brix, our plants do not attract pests or fungal attack. It’s all win/win! Soil health gets way better, plant health gets way better and our health responds.

Nutrient dense food is my special area of interest and it is the focus of our Spring internship program. We also run a 1 day Growing Nutrient Dense Food workshop each year, together with our Bio intensive Growing Workshop. I suggest to sign up for both, as the learning from both compliment eachother in so many ways.

- Kay Baxter, Nov 5, 2012

During our last workshop at the Koanga Institute, we built a rocket stove. Our design brief was very specific in that the stove had to be practical, easy to use and long lasting, whereas what is being built by most backyard experimenters like myself, while being fun to make and muck around with, are more along the lines of “camp stoves” built from tin cans that quickly disintegrate with use. Another consideration which I felt was important was that most rock

What I envisaged was not a rocket stove but a Rocket Oven. This is a concept I had originally developed nearly three years ago when living in a small two room shack. It had a camping gas burner but no oven. Missing those things that only an oven can provide is a great motivator. Of course, due to my previous work making rocket stove powered water heaters (a subject we’ll get to at a later date), it was always going to be rocket powered. The hard part, or so I thought, was making an oven chamber that was insulated, had racks and a fitting door. Plus, it had to look good. It was then that I realised I had described an electric or gas oven. From there, the rest was easy. A quick trip to the local scrap merchant secured an old benchtop unit where the hot plates are beside the oven. Cost $20.00.et stoves are just that – stoves, as in – place a pot on top and boil something.

After discarding the hot plate section, the next step was to build a rocket stove ‘j’ elbow (see photo), cut a hole in the base of the oven and sit it on top of the rocket stove. Next step was to insulate the rocket stove for maximum combustion efficiency and finally the fun part – Light Her Up!

I can honestly say I’ve never done an experiment that went so smoothly and easily met and surpassed my expectations. With only slight modifications and tweaks, this oven was in near daily use for approximately two years. The stove at the Koanga Instititute is the distillation of everything that I’ve learned since in subsequent builds. Between our internship program and various courses, it is in near constant use and has performed flawlessly.

Finally, I can honestly say that as I pass through the institute kitchen during the day, I can’t help but go over to the oven and peer down into the combustion chamber if I can hear the soft rumble of the stove as it goes about its business.

Covering the rocket elbow with a 50/50 mixture of sawdust and clay, which acts as insulation and protects against getting burnt by the extremely hot elbow. Note the chicken wire which is used to strengthen and hold the mixture in place till it drys .

 Our first rocket stove dinner! It roasts meat and vegetables beautifully... and bakes excellent bread. We're using very little wood - just a tiny fraction of what we'd use in a regular wood fired pizza oven.

The first green woodworking project I ever carried out was on a 5 day workshop at the Centre for Alternative Technology in Wales about 20 years ago but its still carved into my memory.  I wanted to make a handle for an axe head I had picked up at a car boot sale for just a few pounds.  A group of us set to work on an ash tree of maybe just under a metre in diameter that had blown down in a recent gale, splitting it with wedges until it was in sections small enough to tackle with a froe.

Cleaving Wood with a Froe

Crosscutting a tree by hand into poles or logs of the required length for whatever you plan to make is not too difficult.  However anyone who has rip sawn wood by hand will understand why woodworkers in the past generally chose to convert logs and poles down to dimension by splitting or cleaving them rather than sawing along the grain.  Larger trees such as the ash we were working with need to be split first with wedges.  Short logs up to 10 inches (250mm) and 2 ft in length (600mm) can be cleft using a splitting axe and mallet.  Longer poles are best cleft with a froe and supported in a cleaving brake.

Once I had a section of the ash small enough I had to use a rough wooden club or maul to drive the froe into the end-grain of the wood leaving an even volume of wood either side of the split.  The split tends to run into the fibres of wood under tension so that if one side of the split is smaller than the other it will start to run out on that side.  Once the blade of the froe had been fully knocked into the wood, I put the work-piece in the cleaving brake and used the froe as a lever to carefully rive the wood in two. If the split does start to run out on one side then levering the froe back the other way can correct it.  Some tree species cleave more readily than others do (e.g. catalpa, sweet chestnut, ash and willow) and all are easier if they are straight-grained and knot-free.

Working with Nature

Working with hand tools out in woodland is a very different experience from chainsaw work.  There is no harsh engine noise only the wind in the leaves and the calls of birds; no pollution just the scent of damp earth, of the timber and of woodland flowers and no constricting heavy safety gear separating you from the rest of nature.  I was quickly hooked on this gentle and sensitive way of working with wood.

Working with nature is inherent in the very processes of green woodworking.  For example in making my axe handle I was starting the actual carving stage of the process with a piece of wood that was a radial section of the tree’s trunk like a slice of the cake.  This is already a close approximation of the cross-section of a finished handle where it sockets into the axe-head and furthermore means that the annual rings of the tree are now aligned at a right-angle to the blade.  This means that what the tree has produced for you as it has grown is the ultimate natural laminated spring with all the flexibility of the tree as it blows in the wind now in the plane that absorbs the shock of actually using the axe!

Side-Axe

Before starting to carve the shape of the handle our tutor encouraged me to draw around a suitable axe handle on the side of my cleft blank to give me a visual guide to what I was cutting to.  I used a side-axe to do the initial rough shaping making sure I kept my fingers well above where I was cutting with its razor-sharp blade!  The single bevel and flat side of a side-axe make it possible to trim wood very accurately with practice but I do recall that it can be hard on the wrist for the uninitiated!

Once I had used the side-axe to go as near as I dared to the outline I had drawn it was time to move on to the shave-horse.  What a fantastic piece of kit this is!  They have been around for at least 500 years so I doubt that whoever genius invented it had ever heard of ergonomics but no modern expert could improve on the simple elegant efficiency of its design.  (My definition of an expert of course is someone who knows more and more about less and less until they know everything about bugger-all!) 

Shavehorse

Essentially a shave horse is a bench with a foot-operated clamp which holds a workpiece stable at the right height and angle for it to be worked on with a drawknife (just a two-handled sharp blade used on the pull stroke) or spokeshave.  And so I set to work with my drawknife carving down to the outline and transferring its shape into three dimensions.  I quickly became fascinated by the smoothness of the wood left behind the cut of the drawknife and the shape of the handle with its elegant flowing lines emerging under my hands.

Unseasoned Wood

In these traditional crafts the wood is usually shaped unseasoned or green, hence the pun around the modern term ‘green woodworking’ (the wood is “green” and the techniques are “green” in the “clean, green” sense).  The fibres of wood are much softer when green and so tools like drawknives leave a beautiful planed finish behind it.  As the wood will shrink as it dries anything that needs to be a precise fit, such as the where the handle sockets in to the head, must be left oversize until after it has fully seasoned.  However it is much easier and more satisfying to carry out as much as possible of the shaping before the wood has dried and hardened.

Spokeshave

I quickly learned that you cannot successfully shape and smooth wood working against the grain.  A wood like ash tears very easily and after a while I shifted to using a spokeshave which on this task is very useful as it can be used on the push as well as the pull-stroke.  I became so completely absorbed in this work that people had to practically drag me away from it to make me eat my meals which, built like a whippet as I always have been, is most unlike me!
 
I have made many axe and other tool handles since then; here in New Zealand as well, using tea-tree rather than ash, but have never lost the excitement of producing something both useful and beautiful or the pride of actually using something that I have made myself.  Nothing out of a shop could ever give that satisfaction!

John

John lives at Kohatu Toa Eco-Village and offers various workshops in Green Woodworking through the Koanga Gardens Workshops for Self Reliance programme. Some of the tools John mentions can be difficult to source in New Zealand.

Seed saving is the obvious example and the primary focus of Koanga Institute’s work, reducing our dependence on the imported products of multi national seed companies (many dabbling in bio technology). This, along with growing food (reducing food miles, waste & so much healthier and tastier) are Gail’s passions – mine are working with trees and the outputs of managed woodlands.

In the past woodlands supplied people with many things from fuel to tool handles, plates and dishes, that are currently (and temporarily, in the sense that reliance on a finite and dwindling resource can’t be permanent) provided by the petro chemical industry. Woodlands have the potential to be a completely and genuinely sustainable resource if properly managed. In Britain, organised woodland management (mostly coppicing) has been carried out for thousands of years and, if anything, has helped to increase bio-diversity rather than damage it over that time.

Coppicing

Coppicing is a management system that utilises the natural ability of certain tree species to re-grow from the stump or stool after being felled. Such trees can throw up a crop of a six or more poles off the stool after each felling almost indefinitely. The rotation length ranges from 4 to 30 years depending on a variety of factors: the particular species; how fast it re-grows; its location; and also what the poles are to be used for (so how large they need to be). There are examples of coppice stools in Britain that are over 2000 years old. Suitable coppice species in NZ include willow, poplar, acacia, eucalypt, ash, alder and catalpa. By comparison with UK conditions the rotation times here are much shorter with firewood sized poles being obtainable from established coppice stools in as little as 4 years.

Traditional Woodcrafts
For over 20 years I have been learning and practicing the old and almost forgotten skills of traditional woodcrafts. These crafts use a minimum of simple hand tools and various self-made wooden devices to produce a huge range of products. Thankfully in Europe these crafts have had somewhat of a revival over the past few years but they are less well known here.

Most of the products of these crafts use “cleft” wood. This is where round poles are split radially into sections or billets before being shaped into their final form. This has several advantages over rip sawn wood – it can be done without powered machinery using a cleaving axe or an L-shaped tool called a froe and a rough maul or wooden club. As it works with the grain of the wood rather than cutting across it, it also preserves the strength of the billet and reduces its exposure to rot.

 
Rough shaping of these billets is usually carried out with a side axe. These are the smaller relation of larger hewing axes or broadaxes that can be seen in places like the Kauri Museum at Matakohe. They are flat on one face and have only a single sharpened bevel. I have no idea why these tools disappeared from use over the last 60 years,
I use my side axe regularly for many different purposes from putting points on stakes through to rough shaping billets for tool handles. I couldn’t do without it.

Our garden is full of the products of our community woodlands including bean poles, plant supports, gates, fences, trellises and hurdles and many of our tools have been repaired with handles I have made myself.

Further Information & Workshops
I hope to share more of my experiences in traditional woodland crafts (often now called green woodwork) in future catalogues but for any of you out there with a particular interest in creating useful and beautiful items from sustainable managed woodlands could attend one of the workshops I run as part of Koanga’s programme – hope to see you there.

Currently John runs three workshops each year through Koanga Gardens.

Our East Friesian milking sheep have just finished lambing on the weekend and are much healthier this year as we've moved them to a lusher paddock. East Friesians have an even higher fat content than cow's milk. We're currently trying to breed some hardiness into the East Friesians. Slowly breeding the white flock into a black flock through genetic throw backs in colour. For two years, we've put black Rams over the white ewes. The reason for breeding black is to stop sunburn, which keeps milk production steady.

We're now starting to set up fencing for mob grazing; a method by which you allow the grass to grow taller and absorb more nutrients from the sun. The roots also grow deeper, which sequesters carbon; reducing or possibly eliminating carbon emissions and overall, protecting the soil from sun damage - essentially allowing us to grow higher quality food.

 For 30 years our family has been actively involved in breeding heritage chickens. We were lucky enough to have begun this project whilst there were several old time “chicken men” still around in Northland where we lived then.

These guys were the judges at poultry shows and were all absolute fountains of information about chickens and other poultry. Every time I visited one of them I came away acutely aware of how little I knew and how little I could absorb of their knowledge, and actually the awareness that what we already know, determines what we can absorb at any given time, and also how much of the old knowledge we have lost.

In just the same way that we have ‘run’ our potatoes down, through a lack of understanding of how to mainta

in them in a high health state, and we now have to recover their health for them to be useful in future sustainable biological systems, we have to do the same thing with all breeds of our poultry.

What we have left in New Zealand now after 60-80 years of industrial egg and chicken meat farming is low q

uality produce, grown in unsustainable degenerative systems! We also have people breeding heritage chickens with hugely variable breeding skills and almost invariably breeding for ‘show’ standards but missing out the ‘production’ 

aspect ( eg how many eggs they lay) entirely. All of them to my knowledge are breeding and selecting chickens within the paradigm of ind

ustrial chicken food. They are inevitably selecting for the chickens that do best on industrial food.

I would like to acknowledge and thank both Viv Purdon, one of the old guys who taught us lots and who was the breeder we brought our Golden Wyndottes from. he showed us that that line breeding works best and that industrial chicken feed is not as good as whole grain and high 

quality pasture. I would  also like to acknowledge and thank Ken and Ruth Vincent who are still going strong with their  chickens after all these years. Ken  continues to be a fountain of information and support and he has always milked a house cow to provide his chickens with the best quality food, along with high quality pasture.

We need chickens and ducks that produce high quality eggs, fat, and meat in regenerative systems in an economic way.

So... with as much support and information as we have been able to absorb from our older mentors, along with the chicken breeds we have from them, together with our newer mentors around the world in the field of regenerative agriculture and non industrial chicken farming we are now developing a small chicken operation whose aims are to provide high quality eggs and meat to our community ( Kotare Village) in an economic way,  whilst breeding lines of poultry that are strong, healthy and true to type in regenerative systems.

This will mean that we will be developing high quality pasture, food forest systems that drop high protein and fat  seeds for the chickens etc as well as providing a forest floor composting system to grow live insects etc. We will be milking cows to provide curds for the chickens and comfrey will play a major role in providing chicken protein. We will also have worm and maggot farms.

It also means we will be using the traditional ‘trap nest’ system for recording how many eggs each hen lays  so we can breed from the best birds. We will also be integrating chicken systems with cow systems in some cases, and in others we will be researching how we can produce high quality eggs in sustainable ways for urban situations ad ¼ acre situations.

We will be doing this within the Thorny Croft wider small farm vision as described in an earlier article and also within the Koanga Institute internship program. If you are interested please contact us.

Thorny Croft is an 8 hectare ‘small farm’, being established by Bob Corker and Kay Baxter, together with Taiamai and Franzi Corker. It is ‘Thorny Croft ’ because of the hawthorns which we love, and it is a ‘croft’ in the traditional sense of the word,  in that it is it is a diverse and integrated small holding run by a family on leased land.

Bob grew up on his family farm, which he later bought. He ran it organically with Kay for 30 years as a sheep and beef farm. Taiamai also grew up on that farm. Bob’s passion is with the land, and in finding new models that take care of the land. Taiamai’s passion is with the heritage animals and in meat processing. Kay’s passion is in the connections between healthy soil, healthy plants and animals and healthy people and Franzi’s passion is how all of this expresses as ‘art’.

We are all bringing what we have learned over many years on the land to this project, and we see it as becoming a model for regenerative agriculture. It is a very exciting project bringing together our skills as Permaculture designers, our experience with heritage breeds of animals and our animals that have travelled with us to this land… Dexter cattle (an ancient Celtic dual purpose milk beef breed) , Wiltshire Horn sheep, (a traditional, hardy, horned breed, that shed their wool, bred for meat production), East Freisian Sheep, (German milking sheep), Berkshire pigs, Kiko (NZ breed of meat goats) goats,  Chinese Weeder Geese, Muscovey ducks, Indian Runner duck as well as several heritage chicken breeds.

We are adding to that mix of diversity and integration Management Intensive Grazing practices, and we are aiming to be using our understanding and practice of biological agriculture together with animal management to regenerate the soil. We will also be bringing our experience with perennial tree crops and herbs to add to the mix.

We are committed to providing all of our animal food from the farm, with no industrial inputs (eg grain) in the short/medium term. We are developing our breeding skills to ensure we are breeding animals that can perform in regenerative biological systems.

Thorny Croft is taking on 2 interns this spring  (2012) to put this project on the ground, as part of the Koanga Institute internship program. If this sounds like you, be in!!

As you may have guessed by now, I'm referring to a particular type of hive, called a horizontal top bar hive. First the horizontal part , which is self explanatory , the hive extends horizontally so all the honeycomb is side by side . The top bar bit is a bit trickier , originally these hives only had a single bar ( a stick if you will ) at the top and the bees filled in the rest below the bar, this made them easy to build and is why they were favored in third world aid situations, hence names like Kenyan and Tanzanian. 

But ( my mother always said don't start a sentence with a but , but there it is)... but in most of the developed world there is a requirement that bee hives are easy to inspect and this is usually ensured by a requirement to have fully enclosed frames . 

Practically, that means that while a top bar comb is easy to inspect, it requires a different, more careful technique and the laws that govern these things were written with absolutely no knowledge of the existence of top bar hives. What this means is that to keep the powers that bee (pun intended) happy, a lot of top bar hives now have frames. 

"The bees are swarming!!" The interns, Koanga employees and Kotare villagers alike were all buzzing ourselves to the hives, excited, taking photos, and watching the show. 

Becky Bell, one of our interns explains the excitement of the day: "When a new queen bee is born, the old queen leaves the hive to make way for the new queen, and as she leaves she takes a bunch of workers with her.

This is known as a swarm. The swarm gathers close to the hive for about 3 hours and then can leave and re-gather several kilometers away, which means a beekeeper can easily miss spotting the swarm. Today, the swarm gathered in the mandarin tree close to the hives and the institute buildings, so we were lucky to spot it. Quick work meant that the swarm could be smoothly dropped into a new hive box to create a new hive and naturally expand our hives here at Koanga. An exciting time for the bees! It was especially exciting to see the swarm considering we had moved the hive last week!"

It’s obvious it’s easy enough to feed chickens in a way that keeps them alive…. We can all do that. It’s easy enough to even let a hen go clucky and raise your replacements. If you’re willing to buy shaver chickens and commercial feed it’s even easy enough to keep them laying for a few months of the year, even quite a few months.. With a little more luck or skill some are even able to keep their chickens laying  for even longer.  It is my experience however that managing heritage chickens  for the long haul, so that you get maximum eggs, and or a good meat bird, as well as replacements of such a standard that we actually keep a breed  is quite another matter….. and doing it without industrial chicken feed is another matter again…..

I’m not interested in chickens as pets, or as a bird that I need to feed with industrial grain. I’m making a serious attempt  to provide myself and others with nutrient dense food  and find a regenerative  way  of doing things.

I see a time in the very near future when grain will cost far far more than it does today and when many more will not be able to afford to buy it. Those who can afford them  afford it, may be  challenged by the choice,  given the destruction of our earth’s ecosystems industrial grain production creates? ( see the Vegetarian Myth by Lierre Keith) 

I also understand that chickens are  omnivores, and did not co evolve with industrial grain, or even much grain at all. They co evolved in  forest garden situations in Asia where they could endlessly scratch away in a deep litter situation and live off the bugs, grubs, green shoots, microbes, fungi  and seeds that were there and I’m sure in late summer autumn there would have been significant amounts of grain to be found amongst the grasses on the forest edge.

Most of us have not been giving our animals,  cows or chickens , sheep etc a very wide choice, but when you do it is profoundly interesting to be able to begin to see through their  eyes , why they choose what they choose to eat!

There is a growing awareness that all animals are constantly on the look out for food that will create the mineral range and balance  that they intuitively know they need to be in top condition!

It has always been obvious that there has to be another way of feeding chickens and at the same time achieving high egg production ( so long as you have a chicken selected/bred for high egg production) . There are many heritage breeds of chickens that are purported to be able to lay that number of eggs each year, but few of them do.  I’m going to ignore the question of genetics and breeding, leave that for another time because it is a critical issue, and stick with the feed issue, as we clearly have enough of a challenge with that question alone.  I’m assuming we have chosen a breed for egg production and we now want to be able to feed them without grains and achieve high egg production, eg over 250 eggs a year.

We always had heritage breeds of chickens, and we always kept them under a free range organic regime, and I was always looking for better ways of feeding them. My first clues came from the old poultry breeders  we knew in Northland, the guys who were the show judges, the guys who had been breeding and managing chickens their whole lives. We were fortunate enough to have several of them in our lives and they were quite clear about a few things. Number one was do not use pellets, use only whole grains, and always  free range. Viv Purdon told us that feeding chickens whole grains means they don’t get parasites among other things so that is what we always did. Ken Vincent always milked   cow and soaked his grain in milk, he swore by that and that also seemed like a great idea. The more feed from the farm the better. That was our regime for many years… whole grains soaked in milk, free range ( never put chickens on a bare earth mud yard) and loads of comfrey. Later we learned about sprouting the grain and we did that for many years as well, still do with the little grain we still use.

It was never radical enough for me though, I wanted off the industrial treadmill.

I have always poured over chicken books, every organic chicken book especially. They often have beautiful pictures and great info about housing ,breeds, management etc but when it comes to feeding they either seem to go way over the top with tables about feed and nutrition that the average home flockster or chicken lover can not relate to at all, or they basically ignore the subject. They mostly end up saying the industry knows best , just buy commercial feed.

I  recently discovered a book written before 1923 ( it has no publishing date but has a table of information saying they are 1923 figures) called Ward.Lock.&.CO’s Poultry Book by Dr Harry Roberts.  It goes way back before all those scientific tables showing just what an industrial system thinks chickens need to eat and , back to the basics of chicken patterns… from observation.

He says early in the book “ Birds in a natural state will by instinct manage to secure the right proportion of the necessary constituents for their needs, and those fowls having a fair amount of liberty to range about for their living will be found to obtain in the way of slugs, insects, worms, grasses, seeds, lime and other minerals, enough food  to keep them in perfectly normal condition. What we ask of them, however is something more than normality. We wish to encourage the bird’s productiveness of eggs  or to increase their capacity to put on flesh. It therefore becomes necessary to supplement  with food calculated to have the desired effect.”  in his words “The foods most necessary for adult layers are those containing the constituents necessary to the production of eggs.  Which he says are “nitrogenous substances and proteins” …and so if we want to achieve high egg production without industrial feed, we must focus on a system that provides the ingredients that make eggs best ……..raw live protein!!!.....

The small Scale Poultry Flock by Harvey Ussery ( available through the Koanga website) is the most recent chicken book on the market and I’m so excited to be able to say that it is the best poultry book I’ve ever seen. The most exciting thing about that book is that he squarely faces the question….”how do we feed our chickens without industrial grains” and how do we do it in a regenerative way from our own land……..and he comes up with some great ideas. Not many of them were totally new to me but the fact that he is actually doing it very successfully himself and that he has put all the ideas together and added some that were new to me has been inspiring.

 The best part for me was the section describing the Vermont Compost Company’s operation where they use  chickens to do much of their work. They turn food scraps from restaurants , together with dairy effluent and hay, into high quality compost for sale using chickens to do that work. As a by product, of this operation they receive large numbers of eggs, and the chickens eat only the residual food scraps ( less than 10% of what goes into the compost so not much of that) and the ‘recomposer’ organisms (earth worms, pill bugs, millipedes, crickets, slugs and snails, ground beetles, spiders and fungi whose rhizomorphs chickens love, pupae of insect species, and at the microscopic level thousands of species of bacteria, protozoa, yeats, actonimycetes, and more)  as the heaps become biologically active.

We’re  well down the track  of getting off industrial chicken fed and grain ourselves  and this is how we are doing it.

1.     We are designing and beginning the job of planting food forests that contain many  trees that are legumes that drop eg Acacia retinoides, Siberian Pea tree, karamu, tagasaste,  mulberries,  etc etc seed that will become chicken feed in the years to come.  Our dream is that eventually these areas will have biologically active deep litter under the forest and the birds will be able to forage all day in ideal conditions that mean we get eggs for very little input. We are in the process, well down the track of drawing up a NZ data base for creating forest gardens and that will include chicken forage trees shrubs etc)

…. In the meantime…….

2.     all our chicken houses have a biologically active compost heap within their run. We keep this easy for them to turn over by choosing what goes in there carefully, saw dust ( we have a free local supply)  added regularly as it is high carbon and easy to turn. The carbon absorbs all nitrogen from their manure and any soft material added to the pile and helps produce high quality humus to use back in the garden or orchard. IT takes uop toi ayear to fully develop these biologically active compost heaps that are able to feed the chickens, it’s just a matter of time however if you maintain a  compost pile the chickens can scratch over

3.     All chickens are fed comfrey cut up finely when very young so that they know it and recognise it as a staple part of their diets. They are creatures of habit so ensuring it is a major part of their food when young will ensure they always eat lots of it. It can  make up around 60% of their protein needs as described by Lawrence Hills in Comfrey Past Present and Future.

4.     All chickens   are fed curds from our own cows milk .. we mix the cut comfrey with the curds when the chickens are young. Skimmed milk curds are raw super biologically active, and around ?% protein.

5.     All chickens are fed worms which we specially grow on pig manure and cow manure and comfrey,  (you can also  grow worms on house and restaurant scraps and many other things) with added minerals to create high quality  vermicast and highly mineralised worms! We will be building our worm farms into the ground in a greenhouse ( under the paths so they don’t take up useable space) to ensure the worms are active all through the winter. Worms are raw and high quality protein.

6.     We are learning to produce soldier fly larvae as well, understanding that they are 42 % protein and 24 % high quality fat.  I’ve seen this working well at the PRI at The Channon in Australia and we can see we have the soldier fly bugs here, we will probably also keep our soldier fly larvae system in the greenhouse to extend the season and we will make sure we return larvae to the soil in Autumn inside the greenhouse to ensure we have adults hatching to lay new eggs early as possible in Spring. Soldier fly larvae require wetter feed than worms and a well drained home so it doesn’t become anaerobic but kitchen scraps and garden vege are what they love, but also love dead mice and rats and other dead animal waste. . It is critical to only feed them what they eat in 1 day as opposed to a warm farm where you can fill it with cow manure 40cm deep and leave them top it. There is a lot of info on the internet about making soldier fly larvae habitat with several designs that are well thought through and there is a soldier fly larvae production unit available world wide called a ‘Biopod’. These are very well designed and work very well, but there are cheaper options  if you are keen to make your own on the web as well

7.     Maggots are another excellent food source for our chickens. We used to turn possums into maggots for them and we did that by drilling holes into a 20 l bucket and putting a carbon source eg hay or sawdust or corn shucks in the bottom about 5cm deep, then put in the dead animals best to be no larger than 1 possum, then cover with the carbon (to keep the smell down, very effective). The possum must already be fly blown before going into bucket. We then hang the bucket behind the shed and put underneath the bucket another bucket with very small holes in the bottom so any liquid can drain away to fertilise a tree and the maggots are held in the bucket to be fed as required. If you leave the maggots to simply drop inside the hen house they wait for them to drop but often I found they couldn’t keep up with them or were somewhere else and the maggots went into the ground which I didn’t want. Harvesting them works well. Our current maggot technique is to have a deep litter composting area for the chickens and bury offal possums road kill etc in it sp that there is no smell, and the chickens constantly scratch h it over to get to the maggots. That can be done on a lareg scale with a deep large pile of sawdust and offal from killing sheep cows etc can be buried in it to compost /decompose and provide recomposers for the chickens to eat.

The main things seem to be to remember that chickens and ducks are creatures of habit and if you are going to change anything in their diet, do it slowly. It takes about 10 days of persevering to train chickens to eat comfrey or worms if they haven’t had them before, and that they need protein……  raw,  alive protein in large amounts if you want large amounts of high health eggs! Also you can’t remove grains without supplying an alternative source of quality protein.

I’d love to hear your stories  if you’ve got your  chickens off industrial feed and they are laying well over time.

Chickens, like most other animals are creatures of habit, what you fed them when they are young, they will always prefer. Comfrey and curds are high protein in a form the chickens can digest, and that same mix has been fed to the laying hens as well. All of them are free range as well. We have in the last few weeks set up scratch yards for them, where they make compost. The idea is that they get a significant amount of their food from the decomposing material or more accurately the microbes , insects,  decomposers, (called ‘recomposers’  by Harvey Ussery) and fungi that live in the compost heap. This process takes a while to get happening, as a biologically active compost heap in a chicken pen, based on using sawdust as the carbon source because it’s easy for the chickens to scratch and turn over, takes time to begin decomposing and become biologically active.

This past week we began incorporating animal waste from our home kills into the sawdust piles as well, and it has been so exciting to see just how keen the chickens of all ages are to get to the maggots and just how many maggots the waste produces. Maggots are yet again another source of high quality live protein, perfect chicken food. We are learning to incorporate sheep and goat paunch into the sawdust so that there is very little smell and so that the chickens get the high-quality feed for free. They prefer the live maggots, comfrey and curd to grain most of the time anyway, and maggots top their preference list so far. They will scratch for maggots all day!

High protein is critical for high egg production.  Chickens are very selective eaters when given a chance and providing them with such a range of protein sources can only mean they will get their nutritional needs met better and better without industrial grain. It’s a buzz to see how easy it can all  be, it just takes a little more time. Grains make things very quick and easy. As a global community, we are now facing the results of industrial grain production (check out The Vegetarian Myth by Keith Lierre) and it is way past time we found alternative regenerative solutions. I’m excited about being able to breed and select chickens for both growth and egg production based on a non-industrial, regenerative  system. Right now, I’m seeing 4 and 5 year old Golden Wyndottes laying quite well on the high-protein diet, whereas they hadn’t been laying well on organic sprouted whole grain, and free range only.

It’s really important to keep your chickens free of lice as well. Lice-ridden chickens will not lay as well, nor be as healthy. You can make a dust bath and add some diatomaceous earth, a non-toxic, naturally occuring product, high in silica, to keep your chicken’s lice free for the summer.  You get a 20ltr plastic container, cut it in half, nail it to a board, so the chooks can't flip it over when they stand on the edge. Mix 1/2 kg of diatomaceous earth with an equal amount of sand; they'll use this as their bath and absolutely love it. Use this method as a preventative measure; if your chickens are already badly infected, then you can dust their wings directly - just make sure to wear a mask, as the fine dust is not good to breath in directly. A 1kg bag should last you for the entire season.

Take a large wide mouthed jar say 4 litres. ¾ fill with water and then cover with a cloth held o by a rubber band. Every time you eat a kiwifruit put the skin into the jar. Try and fill the jar within a week with skins .. you could also add apple cores . Stir every day until the fruit stops fizzing. Strain all the solids out and cover the jar with a clean cloth. If you have some ‘mother of vinegar’ from another container of raw cider vinegar add that at this stage but not essential. Leave the liquid in a cool place not in the same room as wine or other home brewing operations and taste each week until it reaches a vinegar taste. Bottle tightly and use!

The more fruit you put in the better (stronger and more flavourful)  the vinegar will be. You can add honey when you strain out the fruit to make it stronger vinegar.

We also make vinegar from the dregs of our honey mead, fruit wines and beer. they all taste different and have different end uses but all are good.

We use vinegar for:

• Add to bone broths to help break down the bones, to get the minerals into the broth and to reduce the odour of the broth cooking.
• To make Paneer and other cheeses from milk
• With Olive oil for salad dressings.
• As a way to hygenically clean kitchens, without killing off the friendly bacteria. (Antibacterial sprays and chemicals are harmful, as they can damage the friendly bacteria we have in a healthy digestive system)

Soak dried Capucijners or Dalmatian peas overnight, drain, and cook in fresh water (again, never overcook, as that makes them dryer and less tender). Drain.
Fry some smoked bacon to a crisp, never soft like New Zealand custom. Remove from the pan while still hot and put on a cold plate to keep it crisp. Cut into small pieces.
Fry onion rings in the bacon fat. Add the peas, bacon, chopped up gherkins (preferably sour rather than sweet ones), and a little pepper. It probably does not need salt.

Cook the peas as above.
Boil a few potatoes, slice, and put in the bottom of a casserole.
Fry onion rings, add mince meat and fry till just brown. Add sambal (sambal oelek will do, but sambal manis or sambal bajak taste better), and curry powder.
Fry a sliced apple, cube, and ad to the mix.
Mix in the peas, bring to taste with soy sauce.
Spoon the mince/pea mix onto the sliced potatoes, cover, and gently cook for 5 or 10 minutes to let the flavours blend.
Variation: Instead of potatoes, use capsicums, and add crisply fried bacon or use fried pork pieces instead of mince.

Every week we gather one night to pack seeds for a few hours, with the idea that many hands makes light work. We can hardly keep up with demand this spring, however and some nights there is a mountain of seed to pack. As an "encouragement" for the volunteers I often make a dessert for us all, and it is fun to experiment. We're all feeling pretty good sticking to the GAPs diet, so our meals are without grains or sugars. Added to that, we don't have an oven, so we have to be creative!

Last time I made this, it was more like a rich chocolate mouse, but here I've turned it into a chilled coconut crust, for a more elegant presentation.

1 cup toasted desiccated coconut
1/3 cup cashew nuts, chopped fine
1/3 cup melted butter or coconut oil.

Mix all together and press into a shallow pie dish, chill to set.

Chocolate mousse filling:
1 can of coconut cream
1/3 cup fair-trade organic cocoa
1/2 cup organic coconut oil
1 cup chopped dates and or prunes soaked for 1/2 an hour in boiling water    

1/2 teaspoon natural vanilla essence, or 1 tsp grated orange zest (optional)

Drain the liquid from the dried fruit*, then place in a saucepan. Add the cocoa and mix till smooth, add the coconut oil and heat gently till it melts. Add the coconut cream, mix till smooth and take off the heat. Mix in the vanilla or orange, then tip into the prepared crust. Chill for a few hours to allow the mixture to firm up.

* the drained liquid is really sweet, and may be used in smoothies, porridge, pancakes, stewed fruit, waste not!

1 head Napa cabbage, or up to 800g leafy greens
1 bunch spring onions, chopped ( we use welsh bunching onions, and green garlic tops also)
1 cup carrot, very finely sliced or grated
1 Tablespoon freshly grated ginger
1/2 cup daikon radish, grated. (optional)
3 cloves garlic, peeled and minced
1/2 teaspoon dried chilli flakes (we use chopped dried Sweet Paprika)
1 Tablespoon sea salt
4 Tablespoons whey (drained from plain yoghurt or kefir)

Place vegetables, ginger, garlic, chili, sea salt and whey in a bowl and pound with a wooden pounder to release the juices. Place in a  1 litter glass jar and press down firmly until the juices come to the top of the veggies. The top of the vegetables should be at least 1 inch below the top of the jar. (Very important!) Cover tightly and keep at room temperature for about 3 days, before transferring to cool storage.

This is how you can ferment them:

• Grate the cleaned radish into a bowl.( this can be a mix of grated root vege such as beetroot, carrot, daikon, onion and a little garlic )
• For every litre of grated radish ( or mixed vege) add 1 tablespoon of sea salt and 4 table spoons of whey.
• Mix and pack into a 1 litre bottling jar with a wide top.
• Pack down until the juice covers the grated radish and leave at room temperature for 3 days .
• Place into the fridge and leave for 3 weeks before eating.

Serve with meat, or protein dishes.

Originally published in Koanga Institute Newsletter, July 2008.

Firstly you’ll probably need a corn grinder. We import them especially for all you corn officionadoes who are keen to learn to make tortillas, cornmeal and posole. We use our corn grinder every morning to grind our Essene Flax seed and pumpkin seeds that we eat with our breakfast, as well as all our dry or wet corn processing. You also need to know that traditionally corn was always cooked with woodash, or lime. This changes the nutrional qualities of the corn and in fact means that a complete range of amino acids is available.

POSOLE

Posole is basically any kind of dried corn that has been soaked for 24 hours with woodash ( 1 heaped tablespoon of clean woodash per cup of dried corn) and then slowly cooked until the corn is burst right open and fluffy like pop corn, at which point it can be rinsed and used in soup etc, or ground to make tortillas or porridge etc.

Kaanga Ma seed after soaking in wood ash water

CORNMEAL PORRIDGE

Cornmeal Porridge can be made in many ways, two of the most common are:

• Grind your dried corn ( flour corn) and lightly toast it in a pan. Boil water  (3 cups water 1 cup cornmeal) and add the roasted cornmeal whilst whisking it until it begins to thicken. Continue stirring until the porridge is very thick and comes away from the sides of the pot. Serve with dried fruit, honey, ground flax seed and pumpkin seed and yoghurt!
• A variation on the theme which is a healthier option is to soak the corn meal in a strained wood ash solution overnight, strain and then add to your boiling water in the morning while whisking fast.

TORTILLAS

Tortillas are made by making posole first then grinding posole into a bowl. This is called wet grinding because the mixture will be moist. This paste is then moistened a little more by adding water if needed then forming into balls and flattening. I have a mexican flattener ( don’t know what it’s called?) but you can put a banana leaf on a board, put the ball of paste on the leaf, add another leaf and squash with another board and push to flatten. Remove the top leaf, lift up using the second leaf and put onto a hot stove top ( woodstove) or onto a gas heated metal plate. It needs to be very hot, the tortillas cook fast and they can be turned over and finished on the other side.

• 1 cup of amaranth
• 1 can of coconut milk (you can use ordinary cows or goats milk too)
• 2 cardamon seeds
• 1 curl of cinnamon stick
• 1 handful of dried fruit, possible raisins or dried apricots sliced
• 1 Tbspn of whey (you can easily make your own, just and a little yoghurt in a cloth with a bowl underneath; it will turn into cream cheese in the cloth, and whey in the bowl)

Soak the amaranth in 2 cups of water and the whey for 24 or even 48 hours - the longer the better.  Drain through a sieve – make sure the seeds can’t go through the sieve - and put grain and can of coconut milk with all the other ingredients into pot with 1 cup of water. Bring to boil and simmer on slow heat until grain swells, turn off and sit for 20 minutes.

Serve as is, or add fresh , bottled or dried fruit, and sprinkle with toasted ground pumpkin seeds.

Enjoy!

• 2 potatoes per person, boiled with skins on then cooled and peeled. They are easy to peel, just slit the skin and it peels away from the potato
• Yellow, Red, Green, Orange and stripey tomatoes. Use 1 or two per person, cut into bite sized pieces
• Hard boiled eggs 1 per person - sliced
• 1 California red onion finely slice
• A big handful of finely chopped chickweed, parsley, basil, chives, or whatever greens you have
• A few pieces of chargrilled sweet pepper (stored in a jar of olive oil with a garlic clove in the fridge)
• A diced and grilled purple skinned eggplant

Mix all together in a salad bowl and pour over a dressing made of 50% quality olive oil and 50% organic cider vinegar.

They describe this as a traditional Chilean dish. This is our adaptation of their recipe – it’s a great dish which uses things that are easy to grow here. I use Selugia Beans, Kaanga Ma corn and Cupola pumpkin. Yum!

• Dried beans – soaked and cooked until soft
• Corn – made into posole and ground
• Pumpkin
• Oil
• Onion
• 2 cloves garlic
• Basil
• Chilli (optional)

Remove pumpkin skin, chop pumpkin into pieces, add to the already cooked beans and then simmer until soft. Mash pumpkin and some of the beans.

Heat oil in thick bottomed frying pan, and fry onion and garlic. Add pepper or chilli as desired.

Add the ground corn to the pan and cook slowly, stirring frequently.

Add the pumpkin and bean mixture to the corn.  

Add fresh basil and cook for a few more minutes, stirring frequently.

 Serve with tomato sauce or salsa. Great in flatbreads with some guacamole!

Enjoy!

They describe this as a traditional Chilean dish. This is our adaptation of their recipe – it’s a great dish which uses things that are easy to grow here. I use Selugia Beans, Kaanga Ma corn and Cupola pumpkin. Yum!

• Dried beans – soaked and cooked until soft
• Corn – made into posole and ground
• Pumpkin
• Oil
• Onion
• 2 cloves garlic
• Basil
• Chilli (optional)

Remove pumpkin skin, chop pumpkin into pieces, add to the already cooked beans and then simmer until soft. Mash pumpkin and some of the beans.

Heat oil in thick bottomed frying pan, and fry onion and garlic. Add pepper or chilli as desired.

Add the ground corn to the pan and cook slowly, stirring frequently.

Add the pumpkin and bean mixture to the corn.  

Add fresh basil and cook for a few more minutes, stirring frequently.

 Serve with tomato sauce or salsa. Great in flatbreads with some guacamole!

Enjoy!

Place figs on a baking tray whole with stems still attached, drizzle honey over them and bake in the oven until they are well cooked, then place in preserving jars that have been heated in the oven, pour fig honey liquid over them until the jar is full and screw on the seal and bands. Honey Baked Figs are a treat with winter puddings or even whipped cream ice cream etc.

Prepare the Corn

Put 1 cup of dry flour corn (Kaanga Ma, or Blue Hopi, Pink Hopi, Hokianga Yellow and Red etc.) into a pot with 3 cups of ash water made by taking clean ash from your woodstove or lighting a special fire with dry clean wood and collecting the ash. Put the ash into a large jar so that it fills the jar 1/4 of the way up. Then fill the jar with water and let the water clear. It will be soapy and a strong alkaline liquid at that point. If you have charcoal in with your ash it will float so take it off the top.  Bring the pot to the boil and simmer for 30 minutes then, adding as much water as you need to stop the corn from drying out, turn off and leave over night. Bring to the boil again the next day and simmer until the corn is swollen and puffed open, and quite soft. In traditional Central America this is called posole and can be used for many things - it's great in soup instead of the soup mixes we used to buy, can be put through the corn grinder and then used to make all kinds of traditional Central American dishes. We tip the pot of posole and ash water into a colander and run clean water over it to clean the posole. Then put the posole into a bucket of fresh cold water and rub it until the husks float off. Float off as many as you can and then put the posole through the corn grinder as fine as possible.

Making Tortillas

Now you have bowl of ground cooked corn, which you can form into balls in your hand and then put a plastic sheet (or banana leaf ) on the bench, place your corn ball on top, add another plastic sheet or leaf and roll out into a tortilla with the rolling pin. Heat the pan really hot, the top of the wood stove or barbeque fire is even better, roll the plastic off the top of the tortillas pick the tortilla up using the bottom sheet of plastic, tip your hand over so the tortilla goes into the pan and then quickly roll the plastic off the top of it. Turn over when it is beginning to get a few brown patches and take out when cooked.

Layering Vegetables

Once you have a pile of tortillas, place one in the bottom of your lasagne dish, layer your sauteed eggplant, tomato, hot and sweet peppers, garlic, onion and basil and make as many layers as you wish. When you have gone as high as you want place a tortilla on top and liberally sprinkle with cheese.

Cook in moderate oven so the top doesn't burn.

It's quite a process so it's great idea to do a lot at once and either freeze, dry or bottle the posole so you can easily use it when needed.

• 6 cups of dried corn shelled off the cob
• soak over night in water
• pour off water
• put into a pot with 1/2 cup baking soda and cover with water.. make sure corn remains covered with water at all times when cooking
• simmer 1 hour maybe a little more until when you take the kernels out of the pot you can rub the skins of. Remove from heat drain
• place in a colander and rub under running water until you get as many skins off as possible
• put kernels into a bucket or bowl and float off skins
• Put back into a pot and cover with water. continue cooking another hour then rub again
• repeat process of rubbing off skins  and cooking until the corn kernels are big and white and fluffy without any skins.
• They are then ready to be ground for tortillas, used as they are in a chilli soup or any other kind of soup, dried ready for grinding to make tamale etc etc etc

Have this dynamite Kale salad recipe for you.
Ingredients;
ONE LARGE HEAD OF KALE.( WE COMBINED A BIG BUNCH OF DIFFERENT ONES TO FILL A SALAD BOWL)
1/2 medium sliced thin red onion
1/4 cup each sesame, pumpkin and sunflower seeds
1 avocado cut into chunks(optional)
handful of any type of sprouts
Dressing:

1/3 cup of braggs liquid aminos
1/3 cup lemon juice
1/3 cup flax seed oil  or olive oil
directions

combine braggs and lemon juice in a blender or whisk vigorously
slice onion into thin moons and marinate in dressing while you prepare the rest of the salad.
Toast seeds in cast iron pan.
de- stem kale
stack the leaves and slice 1/4 inch ribbons. This is the most important step. Sing to the kale,
Toss sprouts, kale and seeds together with all the marinated onion and as much dressing as necessary to lightly dress the whole salad, add avocado, toss well with your hands.
Thank the earth for your bounty and eat with loved ones.

•     4 medium Crook Neck Squash
•     3 big handfuls dandelion leaves
•     2 cloves garlic       
•     Juice of ½ a lemon
•     Butter / Olive oil for sautéing
•     Sea Salt      
•     Black Pepper
•     Tasty Cheese of some sort (optional)

Slice the squash or zucchini into thin rounds, then sauté in butter/olive oil with a big pinch of sea salt until they become soft and translucent. Stir occasionally and let them cook down a bit, over a low heat with a lid on.
Wash the greens in a large basin of water, then roughly chop. Crush the garlic and add to the pan, with a big tablespoon of butter, and the lemon juice. Mix until just combined then take off the heat.
Pile the dandelion greens into the pan, and put a lid over them, allowing them to wilt. After 2 or 3 minutes remove the lid and stir the greens into the squash.
Serve with freshly cracked black pepper and some sort of tasty cheese.

Place peppers over the heat or flame and turn until charred and black all over. You can do this with the stalk and seeds still on r off. Once the skin is charred remove and place peppers in a brown paper bag for 10 minutes. Remove from bag ad peel off the tough thin outer skins which should come off quite easily, under water is easiest.
You can now do lots of things with them. If you place them in a jar with garlic cloves and olive oil, they can be eaten or used in salads over a long period, especially if kept in the fridge. They can be frozen to use in winter soups and stews. I often mouli them so they can easily be added to casseroles, soups and pizza… hot roasted pepper is excellent for pizza and pumpkin soup! The Change of Heart cookbook contains many recipes with roasted peppers.

These sauce and paste recipes are very easy to make.  I added the fermented chilli because I was also making a fermented chilli sauce and I love chilli so I added some…not essential..

• tomatoes, any amount but the more you do at a time the less relative work you a recreating for yourself.    
• olive oil to fill bottles (a good reason to put sauce in narrow necked bottles and fill to neck, so that you only need a small amount of olive oil, and also it's easy to pour the sauce).
• sun-dried sea salt (1 Tbsp per litre of sieved tomato sauce).
• 1/2 cup whey (optional). The whey will just determine the type of fermentation microbes; it is fine without, but whey will make it a lactic ferment.
• wine bottles or other bottles (do not need tight lids, so you could use a cloth tied over the top if desired).
• plastic or wooden bucket (not metal!).
• ground black pepper to taste.
• a little dried or fermented chilli or other herbs.

Place tomatoes into fermenting bucket, mash and squish with hands until a reasonable consistency is achieved leaving 10cm of free room at the top of bucket, add whey if you choose to use it . Place a cloth tightly over the top to keep out all bugs. Stir twice daily, squishing well.

When the fermentation has stopped (no more bubbling or frothing - usually about a week, but sometimes more depending on temperature at the time), put the resulting tomato through a juicer , or seive, or processor of some sort to remove all skins and seeds. Add salt and other dried spices herbs if you wish (if you wish to add fresh herbs, they must be added at the beginning so they go through the fermentation process). Pour into bottles and cover with 2cm of olive oil in the top of each bottle neck. Cover loosely and store in a cool place. The only thing that can go wrong is if you bottle the sauce before it has completely finished the fermentation process, in which case it will continue fermenting in the bottles and the olive oil will spill over and make a mess. If this happens I suggest you pour it all out again, leave to ferment longer,  then bottle again and add oil.

This will keep for over a year. Ours is 1 year old and showing no signs of going 'off' or being different in anyway...

I was initially very nervous about how this would taste but I have to say it tastes very good. The complex flavours of the tomato come out with the fermentation process and there is absolutely no need for sugar or vinegar, it is all there.

To thicken your sauce up to a solid paste consistency, simply strain the sauce through a breathable cloth until desired thickness is achieved. I use a fine wine straining bag from the home brew shop (I use these bags for lots of things, including straining the honey from the wax). Whatever you use must have fine holes or it will all fall through and you will be left with nothing. To make tomato puree just keep an eye on the process and remove and bottle at the desired thickness. I hang my dripping bag from the clothes line (cover with a towel to stop fruitflies landing on it) and keep it in the wind to encourage it to thicken/drain fast. Add the salt after hanging, and desired consistency is achieved. Check salt levels you may wish to add more as the tomato is more far more concentrated.

A Word of warning: If you are going to add this tomato sauce to your cooking, remember that it has already been salted. Bought tomato puree is never salted and I found myself adding salt before tasting and making thngs way too salty to begin with; I've got it sussed now.

This recipe was taken from Preserving Food Without Freezing or Canning by the Gardeners and Farmers of Terre Vivant! with much extra information from our own experiences.

These sauce and paste recipes are very easy to make.  I added the fermented chilli because I was also making a fermented chilli sauce and I love chilli so I added some…not essential..

• tomatoes, any amount but the more you do at a time the less relative work you a recreating for yourself.    
• olive oil to fill bottles (a good reason to put sauce in narrow necked bottles and fill to neck, so that you only need a small amount of olive oil, and also it's easy to pour the sauce).
• sun-dried sea salt (1 Tbsp per litre of sieved tomato sauce).
• 1/2 cup whey (optional). The whey will just determine the type of fermentation microbes; it is fine without, but whey will make it a lactic ferment.
• wine bottles or other bottles (do not need tight lids, so you could use a cloth tied over the top if desired).
• plastic or wooden bucket (not metal!).
• ground black pepper to taste.
• a little dried or fermented chilli or other herbs.

Place tomatoes into fermenting bucket, mash and squish with hands until a reasonable consistency is achieved leaving 10cm of free room at the top of bucket, add whey if you choose to use it . Place a cloth tightly over the top to keep out all bugs. Stir twice daily, squishing well.

When the fermentation has stopped (no more bubbling or frothing - usually about a week, but sometimes more depending on temperature at the time), put the resulting tomato through a juicer , or seive, or processor of some sort to remove all skins and seeds. Add salt and other dried spices herbs if you wish (if you wish to add fresh herbs, they must be added at the beginning so they go through the fermentation process). Pour into bottles and cover with 2cm of olive oil in the top of each bottle neck. Cover loosely and store in a cool place. The only thing that can go wrong is if you bottle the sauce before it has completely finished the fermentation process, in which case it will continue fermenting in the bottles and the olive oil will spill over and make a mess. If this happens I suggest you pour it all out again, leave to ferment longer,  then bottle again and add oil.

This will keep for over a year. Ours is 1 year old and showing no signs of going 'off' or being different in anyway...

I was initially very nervous about how this would taste but I have to say it tastes very good. The complex flavours of the tomato come out with the fermentation process and there is absolutely no need for sugar or vinegar, it is all there.

To thicken your sauce up to a solid paste consistency, simply strain the sauce through a breathable cloth until desired thickness is achieved. I use a fine wine straining bag from the home brew shop (I use these bags for lots of things, including straining the honey from the wax). Whatever you use must have fine holes or it will all fall through and you will be left with nothing. To make tomato puree just keep an eye on the process and remove and bottle at the desired thickness. I hang my dripping bag from the clothes line (cover with a towel to stop fruitflies landing on it) and keep it in the wind to encourage it to thicken/drain fast. Add the salt after hanging, and desired consistency is achieved. Check salt levels you may wish to add more as the tomato is more far more concentrated.

A Word of warning: If you are going to add this tomato sauce to your cooking, remember that it has already been salted. Bought tomato puree is never salted and I found myself adding salt before tasting and making thngs way too salty to begin with; I've got it sussed now.

This recipe was taken from Preserving Food Without Freezing or Canning by the Gardeners and Farmers of Terre Vivant! with much extra information from our own experiences.

• ½ cup boiling water   
• ½ cup cold water
• 1 ½ Tbsp gelatine     • 1 ½ cups frozen strawberries
• 1 cup cream, yoghurt, kefir or coconut cream
• ½ cup rapadura

Dissolve gelatine in boiling water, then add the remaining cold water, in a container that you use the hand held kitchen whiz in. Add the cream, then rapadura, and lastly the frozen berries. The frozen berries will set the dessert instantly, ready for eating. If the fruit you use is not frozen to begin with then place in fridge to set.

Bake kumara until soft. Cool, then peel and mash with salt, whey and garlic. Place in a bowl, cover and leave at room temperature for 24 hours.Place in an airtight container making sure you leave 3cm airspace at top of container. Leave for 1 week before using, but it will continue to change subtly for several weeks.

This is absolutely delicious... we are eating it with every meal now, and making it in larger quantities. Also a great baby food! Lots of ways to use this ferment, you’ll be amazed at how wonderful it tastes and feels in your digestive sytem!!

Right now is the time you get the most eggs from your chickens. ( If you are having problem getting egg production up and have limited conditions for your chickens then I suggest you get some chicken minerals from Environmental Fertilsers).

We have 6 Golden Wyndotte hens for the 2 of us and they will all go clucky over the Spring but right now are all laying everyday. We choose Golden Wyndottes because they lay pretty well, they go clucky and raise their replacements, and provide meat very easily as well. They are also very easy to keep inside a low fence because they are heavy bodied chooks and importantly they are very friendly and relaxed chickens.

If I pickle or store all those extra eggs so that we can eat them over the lean egg period it will make a difference for us.

I remember as a child my parents storing fresh eggs in the laundry in a kerosene can filled with something called “glass water”

I’ve checked out Bill Mollison’s book Ferment and Human Nutrition to see how other people stored their eggs (I’m not keen on any industrial processes being used or products from industrial processes). There have been many many solutions found for storing eggs to be eaten at a later time,  eg the Chinese hundred year eggs, although well known, may not be my idea of a delicious thing to eat. I’m trialling several ways to store them and I’d love to hear from you if you have a tried and true way that uses no industrial products.

Pickled Eggs

Firstly we have pickled them in jars .. fill a sterilsed (with boiling water) jar with still hot shelled, boiled eggs then fill the jar again with unheated naturally brewed vinegar (organic apple cider vinegar if you’re buying it),, and arrange of spices garlic cloves, salt, peppercorns, mustard seed and chili. We will just leave the jar well sealed and test occasionally to see how long the eggs stay good to eat.

Salt Stored Eggs

I can’t wait for next winter to see how my raw eggs have kept in the other trials I’m doing. I have clean fresh eggs simply stored by coating them with either butter, coconut oil, lard or wax to prevent the salt absorbing moisture through the egg's porous shell, next they are sat on a layer of sea salt, without touching, then covered with salt again, this process is repeated until the container is full, I found it's best to cover the final layer of salt with wax to prevent the salt forming a rock hard layer through moisture absorption!  They are reputed to last a year like this! I’m using our home grown gourds for containers, they have been cleaned out well sanded down to make smooth surface then coated with hot beeswax. They look stunning and it feels great to be able to find yet another way t avoid adding to the plastic pollution in the ocean.

Apples in Ghee:

• 1 apple per person, cored and sliced into 1cm thick slices, or cubes
• 1 Tbsp ghee or butter for each apple
• a pinch of solar dried seasalt
• 1 heaped Tbsp per person of toasted coconut
• full fat yoghurt or kefir (home made from raw milk) to serve

Fry the apples in ghee with the salt, and serve with yoghurt and
toasted coconut.

Optional: some organic raisins or date slices, or even some blueberries added to the ghee when cooking apples. We froze organic blueberries when they were in season for this breakfast.

It’s pretty good, with loads of flavour enzymes and traditional fat (ghee, coconut and yoghurt) which is the aim of this exercise! It’s also what makes the meal satisfying and makes you feel full all
morning!

Ingredients:
Any or all of the following:
Beetroots
Carrots
Daikon

along with (optional)
Welsh Bunching onion or spring onion
Green tops from root vegetables
Crushed Garlic
Grated Ginger

Whey - drained from either kefir or yoghurt
Natural Sea Salt

Method
Using a grater or a Jullienne slicer prepare the vegetables. Depending on the moisture content, you may need to pound them for a time so that their juices are released. Adding a tablespoon of salt will help them to break down and juice up. Pack into a fermenting vessel Glazed ceramic is best, or for smaller quantities, glass works well. Aim to get all the vegetables submeged when you push them down, as this will be an anaerobic ferment (without air). You'll need a weight to keep them down while they ferment. A heavy rock on top of a saucer does the trick.

For every 1 litre of vegetables, the ratio is (at least) 4 Tablespoons of whey and 1 Tablesoon of salt. Don't forget to include the salt you added earlier. This ratio will ensure the fermentation happens slowly and safely.

Leave to ferment at room temperature (not too warm) After a week the flavour will have started to develop, and will continue to do so over the coming weeks and months. Try it often to see when you like the flavour best. To halt further fermentation remove to a cool place - fridge / cellar or shady shouth side. A layer of white mould may appear - this is not very appetising but safe to eat. Discard if the ferment develops a mould that is any other colour.

Going to visit Mavis Smith was another of these special connections. Her first comment to me was “What took you so long? I’ve been waiting to see you for years!”

Mavis lives in the Totara House (where she was born), the house her parents built in 1896, 20 years after the original family home (Devongrove) was built in the Matakohe area. Mavis is in her 90’s and is still actively gardening and she has kept alive the original shape of the gardens, the plant material, and the spirit of the family story. It is a wonderful gift for the future, and she has gifted the property to the Matakohe Museum, which she helped establish, so that it will remain as an inspiration to others.

Mavis walked us around the entire property, the old flower beds still vibrant and each flower holding a story from the past, a friend here, an acquaintance there, a favourite smell or colour here, the memories of the homeland and her mother especially. Some of those she showed us included dahlias, chalice vine , old roses, gloxinias and maiden hair ferns in the conservatory, salvias, camellias, beautiful flowering prunes (single and double) cineraria, aquilegia, wisteria, may, datura, jacobinias, and lilies! Also the box hedge (over 100 years old) bordering the entrance way, the fruit trees and ornamental shrubs around the house, the pond and it’s beautiful plantings, the native areas, the farm including the old hand hewn and built head bail, yards and corn crib, the pig sties and fowl yards and up to the old orchard where she is still collecting sheep manure from the sheep camps under the macrocarpas for the flower gardens!

Mavis has a dream of seeing the old orchard re established so that children can “rob” the fruit, just as children, including herself, did in her day.

She can still remember the names of the old apples and peaches etc that were in the original orchard and those that are now missing, having died of old age. Most of these we have in the Koanga Collection so we’ll work with her to replant the orchard with the original varieties which were as follows:

Apples
Hames Red (a local variety which we have not sourced as yet, and have been asked for by many others too, so if you know where there is Hames Red apple please let us know), Red Astrakhan, Northern Spy, Russett, Bob Lambert (this one was from an old Gumdigger’s shanty) and the tree in the Totara House orchard is still alive. The apples from this tree were those that were used to decorate the Matakohe church for the Harvest Thanksgiving each year.

Plums
Burbank, Wrights Early, Tragedy Prune, Golden Drop, Greengage, Xmas Plum, and the favourite family plum named after their friend, Tom Watson, who gave it to them. The Tom Watson is one of those hugely productive plums that it feeds the neighbourhood and makes jam for Africa, sauce etc etc. It is a red plum ripe at Xmas time.

Peaches
Mamie Ross, Golden Queen, and the white fleshed ones which grew wild, all over the area, grown from stone.
Nectarine Goldmine and also Apricots, Pears, Grapes, Oranges, Figs, Quinces and both Maori and Wonder lemons.

The vegetables that were grown in large quantities to feed the large family were silver beet, potatoes (mostly Red Dakota) leeks, cabbages, cauliflower, pumpkins (Triamble), rockmelons, maize, and notably no carrots. Mavis says carrots were not known in those days in the area. They got their kumara from the local Maori, and they grew their maize on family land on the Ruawai flats and bought it back and stored it in the large corn crib still standing today!

It always amazes me when I visit these old gardens, how limited the range of fruit and veges was in each orchard and garden. I’ve had an enormous range at home because of all the plant collection work I’ve done, and although it would be hard in some ways to go without the range, I can see it would also cut out a lot of work and energy and make the whole thing easier to manage, possibly more sustainable. The art would be in choosing the best few of everything.

One of the special things I always love looking at when checking out old gardens and orchards and homes is the out buildings. In our wisdom today we build houses with no eaves even, let alone garden sheds, or a dairy, corn cribs, potato storage clamps or sheds, kumara pits or old pumpkin sheds. I love it when I find these old functional parts of the old culture, still there to be seen and to learn from. Somehow our buildings today have not been designed for functional use. Learning to design homes and spaces that support our shift back to sustainable living means learning to design and build our own corn cribs, pumpkin sheds, potato storage areas, places to make wine and cheese and process meat and store a lot of dried, pickled & bottled food.

I find the art of growing food just the first part of the process; the next part is preparing and processing the food so that what is not eaten immediately is stored for future use. Without a corner dairy or supermarket open all hours this stored food made the difference between eating well or not, or even eating or not! I understand that we have two days food supply stored in the supermarkets - I wonder where the majority of New Zealanders think their food will come from in an international crisis!!!!!

It’s not only outside the houses that we find parts of an old functional culture, they show inside as well. Mavis’s kitchen still has the original woodstove, scrubbed wooden bench and huge table right in the middle of the kitchen. Opening off the kitchen room which looked over the gardens was a beautiful sun room with two single beds covered in hand crocheted and quilted covers; and on those beds Mavis told us, her parents spent their last days in the sun, in the midst of their family. Mavis made it very clear that is where she would like to spend her last days too. Those memories and connections are priceless, and what a gift to be able to show and share those memories with others.

The gift of the last of the elderly gardeners and gardens that are out there now is that of connection; connection with our past, our families, our stories, their ways of doing things that worked for them in this environment, the skills and knowledge needed to live simply, and also connection back to a time when things were done by the season, when people worked with nature and in rhythm with the cycles of nature. The time in our own culture when folk lived with the land in a relatively organic and sustainable way is not that long ago and we still have the opportunity to connect with that and make changes ourselves back towards that ancient way; the way that was practiced for millennia.

Thank you Mavis you are an inspiration to us all! We will help you achieve your dream of creating an orchard for children to “rob”. MY dream is to also be collecting sheep manure from the sheep camps under the macrocarpas when I’m 96!

Kay Baxter
Originally published in the July 2008 Koanga Institute Catalogue

Chickens require around 20% of their food to be very high protein, grains are not high enough. Although grains especially sprouted grains are great chicken food if you want high egg production you have to provide the 20% high protein.

If we are to do this without resorting to industrial products ..... we have some learning to do. I'm sure lots of you will have great ideas and there will be a different idea or system or technique for every flock of chickens that is laying very well...

Here are some of our ideas.. we'd like to hear some of yours

• The obvious long term most sustainable system will be a forage system built on high humus alive soil, with lots of carbon being recycled which will attract loads of insects. Insects are the chickens natural way of getting high protein.
• Ideas for chicken forage systems are in Design Your Own Orchard , but the key for attracting insects as well as providing high protein seeds etc will be having a layer of carbon composting on the soil surface .. creating lots of life.....
• Comfrey is a high protein, low fibre feed source, ideal for poultry
• Maggots grown on possums, road kill  or other waste meat are great protein loved by the chickens. We have found that it works best if you hang up a bucket far from the house with holes in the bottom for the maggots to fall out. The bucket has a layer of hay in the bottom, a possum, and another layer of hay , hang it up with another bucket underneath to catch all the maggots which can be fed to the chickens as required. If you let the maggots fall out in the chicken pen many of them will be wasted because they tend to come out all at once . If you feed them slowly over a few days you can avoid having to keep the smelly container in the chook house as well.....
• minced meat is what some chicken keepers are feeding their chickens.. 20% of their diet. Those of us who kill our own meat will have some that could be used for chicken feed possibly...
• If you live by the sea and fish is an almost daily part of ones diet, then making fish stock will mean you have fish waste that can go to the chooks...  they love that

Our starting point has been to look at finding a good design for both a 'pizza' or earth oven and a rocket stove, and possibly we can combine the two in a way that is practical for the user - the cook

Earth Ovens

We've built enough of these to gain some confidence, however we are aware that there is a lot more to learn. What we can share at present are issues that we have resolved and those that we haven't yet. These include:-

• the best DIY book is Build Your Own Earth Oven: Kiko Denzer and Hannah Field
• dont underestimate the usefullness of a good thick insulation layer around your inner heat mass layer. Cob is not particularly good insulation, better to use a mix of pumice/fibre/loam (as little loam as can still hold together) or if pumice is diificult to get, try pulped paper/fibre/loam. 20% loam renders the result flame proof.
• We have built a good door, made from the same two layered mix of high heat mass inner and insulative outer. We used a wooden handle with no.8 wire woven through the handle and through the insulative mix. So far it works good, the handle stays cool, and it all looks good.
• We've finished our outer layer off with a mix of loam and cow manure. Several layers between drying. We will keep you posted as to how effective this is as a weather proofing in NZ. What have others used??
• Its always a bit of a knack using the right amount of wood to match your cooking requirements (heat intensity and longevity) However if you use too much and have to take some of the embers out before they are burnt right out, douse them in water and once they are dry use them as you would charcoal. (or just add to the fuel mix next time)
• Line up several uses, after the intense heat of cooking pizzas or bread, find another use for the less intense heat, including drying once its cooled down a bit
• So far we have used fire bricks on the base. Has anyone had experience with normal bricks or loam/sand mixes that stand up to the heat. (fire bricks are quite expensive)
• Are the flue exits over the door more effective, or are they just fashionable???
• Watch this space, once we have got a bit of feedback on some of the issues above we will publish a brochure to support those wanting to build there own and giving more feedback on our experiences.

Rocket Stoves

Rocket stoves were invented by Larry Winiarski, particulary targeted at third world conditions where there was a need for low cost, efficiency and use of small firewood. They are remarkable for their simplicity and are being used by many all round the world. We like the original idea, but want to adapt them to our culture where we frequently use more than one pot and have some simmering while other boil. So we're trialling a Rocket stove with a top plate. Its been done before but its all in the detail which isn't conveyed clearly in photos.

For a good introduction to Rocket stoves just google, there's lots to read. We made our base out of a pumice/pulped paper/pine needles/loam mix, trying to keep it as light as possible. In retrospect it is too heavy so we'll find ways to drop some of the bulk next time. The combustion and feeder chambers where formed around tailor made cardboard boxes. Once these were removed the walls of the chambers were plastered with a thin layer of a loam sand plaster. The plate is supported by 4 steel pegs in the base. Our first use of the stove was for cooking flat bread directly on the plate. It certainly got very hot and they were scrumptious. However while there was plenty of hot air coming out the chimney, we had too much smoke come back out the feeder chamber. We'll try some modifications to the gap under the plate and try again.

We understand now something of how the life in the soil communicates with and helps to grow strong healthy plants and animals, and we are understanding and seeing now how nutritionally dense plants and animal food communicates with human DNA to create healthy people. I’m also beginning to get a glimpse of how healthy people can have the ability to complete the circle and communicate with their own environment in a way that benefits and strengthens the whole.

We are an expression of the sum total of all the energy transactions we are and have been connected to … we are an expression of our very own environment!
 

It is easy to see how destroying the queen bee in a bee hive, that has been made by the hive as a whole as part of the process of co evolution, and replacing her with one of our own design or selection, removes that bee hive from the process of co evolution, from the process where by the bees change in relation to their own environment, to retain their strength.

It is also easy enough to see how genetically engineering seeds or even creating F1 hybrids does a similar thing. It stops the ability of the seeds to be in that everlasting, ever changing process of co -evolution with their own environment.

It is easy to see how choosing to inseminate our dairy herds semen from a narrow range of bulls selected for maximum financial return to shareholders, takes our dairy herds out of that process of co evolution where things evolve in a way that strengthens the whole.

I’m realizing more how we do the same thing when we buy or eat food that comes from somebody else’s environment ( eg  china!), or when we eat processed food ( cheezels! etc ) that our bodies can not ‘read’ as real food... or food that contains ingredients our bodies can not ‘read’ ( like industrial vegetable oils), or even simply when we eat devitalized food that is not in season or nutritionally dense.

Now is the time to redesign our lives, (using Permaculture Design, and other methods eg Holistic Management) so that we can get back into that age old process of co-evolution with our environment.

The Internship Programs run by the Koanga Institute are all about giving students the experience and skills to redesign their lives with a focus in the field of their choice (from a range we offer), creating a positive response from their environment, and a stronger and more resilient ‘whole’! (a PDC is a pre requisite for these internships).

Further Reading:
Deep Nutrition - Dr Catherine Shanahan

Part of the solution is to look carefully at what range of foods we eat... our research has pointed us strongly in the direction of the Weston A. Price Foundation . What has worked well  for thousands of years for our ancestors will be our best bet, however we also need to be looking at how to get the mineral content back into our food which means we must look at remineralising our soil.

My ideal solution will not be an industrial one.. it needs to be an indigenous one. One that means our inputs are local, our circles are small and we can do it ourselves.  Those solutions will take a while and in the mean time we need some instant answers for those who feel desperate to get high Brix food into their bodies. The Institute has now published an 8 page  Booklet called Growing Nutrient Dense Food  ( available at shopping ) - using bought products, the best available for the job I believe. We now have to work towards similar local solutions. I feel we have made a huge step forward with the lime or calcium solution. We have as a family been keeping the bones from all of our animals and seafood and shells etc.. and burning them and returning the ash to the compost heap. Over the period of a year, I believe  this would replenish the calcium used, so long as the calcium magnesium 1:7 ratio was sorted first and as long as there is enough carbon in the soil to hold the minerals. It is easy enough to make and add charcoal, which may be a short term solution ( and a long term solution) whilst compost making builds up. Once the calcium levels can be maintained, the carbon and compost can be sorted to the point the minerals and soil life are  held in the soil then it will be a lot easier to find local solutions for the phosphate which is currently all being imported or mined and shipped around the country within agribusiness systems.

Comfrey mines it and brings it to the surface, casaurina needles are high phosphate and there will be many other plants that will recycle phosphate so long as we take care of it in oursoils an do not waste it as we have been doing by not maintaining the carbon levels and the noursihing the soil life. ..sorting the calcium comes first.....I'd love to hear from you if have serious solutions that will add to our understandings here.   Contact us using our online contact form

Lupins, oats, alfalfa and buckwheat all either concentrate or make existing phosphate more available, so regularly using these crops as carbon crops, green manure or compost crops will also help. Possibly together with high quality animal manure we can develop a sustainable phosphate fertility maintenance program. if we want to achieve essential phosphate levels for growing high brix food in the short term we need to bring in phosphate.

No cooking, and it takes only a few minutes to prepare! Tops for taste and health because it’s lactic pickle and full of wonderful enzymes for stomach and intestinal health… what more could you want!

Bread and Butter Pickle

• 3 ½ cups sliced pickling cucumbers (Deka are great (see Institute catalogue) and I use those that are slightly too big to turn into gherkins)
• ½ cup thinly sliced onion (red or brown)
• ½ cup fresh lemon juice (or apple cider vinegar)
• 1/3 cup home made whey (hang some kefir or yoghurt up in a bag and collect the whey underneath or see Change of Heart, our new cookbook)
• ½ cup honey • 1 ½ Tbsp seasalt • 1 tspn tumeric
• 1 Tbsp celery seed (save your own, it’s easy)
• ½ Tbsp yellow mustard seeds (also save your own)

Mix everything together in a large bowl, then press down into a 2 litre glass jar and put the lid on. Leave on the bench for 1 day in the middle of Summer, 3 days in the Winter or 2 in between. Place in the fridge for 7 days and then eat. They will last in the fridge for weeks.

We use alternatives to pine nuts because I haven’t yet figured out how to get the nuts out of the kernels. We mostly use macadamias which are delicious but also roast pumpkin seeds, which are easy to grow and dry and store for all kinds of snacks. We always use one of our strong garlics, either Takahue or Kakanui in pesto to give it a pungent flavour!

The basic recipe is as follows just multiply it by however many times you want.

• 1Tbsp chopped nuts
• 30gms grated parmesan or alternative
• 30-60 gms of fresh basil or parsley etc
• 3-5 cloves garlic
• 6Tbsp quality olive oil

Put enough for meal in a zip top plastic bag and unfreeze as needed.

I have always focused on the Northern Bio-Region as far as fruit trees go. Although I did major collection trips down the Whanganui River several times, visiting marae and old Maori gardens, we always left all of that plant material there with the marae and the locals whose material it was or with those whose ancestors planted it. At the time of those trips we were also gifted plant material from the old cherry orchard that was planted by the Sister Mary Aubert and the nuns at Jerusalem, and pears from the first pear orchard to be planted in the Wanganui area. Now that we have retail outlets for our trees in Bio-Regions other than the Northern region, and we have Andrew Land in the Hokianga developing a set of specifically Hokianga bio-regional trees, we are looking at propagating a wider range than just the Northern bioregional trees, but with labels that clearly spell out what Bio-Region they have come from.

For example when we were working in the Wanganui area we were gifted material from the oldest pear orchard in the Wanganui area, the Letham orchard, and two copies of those pears were planted in the North. Some of them have been outstanding and different to other pears we have seen before or know of. This year we will begin propagating some of them and adding them to the trees that are available to you. Following is a quote from David Williams, a member who grew up on that property:

“Two of the pears were transplanted from Ahuroa and are now growing here at the back of our place in Earthsong eco-neighbourhood. My brother Gary has some too at Manakau near Otaki. The property where we used to live near Wanganui is on the Marangai Flats close to Whangaehu (where Tariana Turia’s marae is). The farm was called “Letham”. This is an area settled by Scottish settlers and there are several villages in Scotland called Letham. The family that farmed “Letham” in the first two decades of last century was the Allisons. Alexander Allison and his brother were noted horticulturalists and they and a Wanganui Girls College Headmistress, Isabel Fraser, are given the credit for introducing “Chinese gooseberry” into New Zealand. Alexander Allison planted many other fruit trees at Letham, including those pear trees that caught your attention. I do not know where they came from, unfortunately. I hope that this information is a help. We are most grateful to you for your story of the Wanganui pear trees and the Jerusalem orchard upriver that was shown on television.”

Some of you may have seen the Country Calendar programme that was made of our trip down the Whanganui River and in particular to the old cherry orchard that was so famous in years gone by that was planted by Mother Aubert. As I said on that program, the trees that were left were mostly dead, lying fallen on the ground like the bleached bones of long dead whales. We found around 20 trees that were still alive out of hundreds that were planted by the nuns and we propagated trees from that wood. They have been grown and taken care of by Mr. David Dilks in the Waikanae area, along with a collection he took himself from the same old cherries. They are fruiting now and he will be making selections this Summer with the idea of  making them available to you again.

If there are any of you in the Lower North Island that know of or have particularly good heritage fruit trees, we are now able to propagate and sell them in your own area, so we’d love to hear from you. They would be marked as Koanga Institute trees from the Lower North Island Bio-Region, which may mean they do not do well in the North. The Wanganui pear trees did, but not the cherries.

Generally speaking, fruit trees shift south better than they shift north. The more Winter chill, the better the fruit set, especially with peaches, plums, apples and apricots. Obviously subtropicals will not shift south, but excluding early flowering varieties of pip and stone fruit that are affected by early and late frosts, other trees will shift south, and often do better than they did in the North.

In the meantime we are about to finally add a collection of our NZ heritage berry collection to the trees available through the Koanga outlets as well. We have been collecting interesting berries for many years and have now got to the point of knowing which ones do well in the North and which ones prefer the colder areas. Many of these berries were sent to us originally from the South Island and I was sceptical about them fruiting in the northern areas, but all of the raspberries have and some of the others have as well. The yellow raspberries that were sent to us by several people from around the old gold mining towns and sites of Central Otago and other South Island areas, are our favourite raspberries now, they are distinctly yellow but turning a little orangy when fully ripe. They have proved to be hardy, good croppers with the best flavour and sweetness.

The Worcesterberry has been a real favourite but needs more Winter chill than the Far North or Eastern Bay of Plenty. A few regular Winter frosts are needed to get a good crop on this berry. We first heard about the existence of Worcesterberries years ago when I visited Henry Harrington and saw the vine he has growing on the south side of his garage (in Southland!). He has trained (espalliered it) to cover the entire back of the large shed, and organised it so that he can hang a bird netting over them when they are ripe. He does that because he has found that they will last on the vines ripe for many weeks, and in fact several months, until Easter down there. The berries are like a very large currant, or small black round gooseberry, and taste like a sweet gooseberry. Henry says they are one of the fruits he remembers from his French grandparent’s (de Malmanche) garden on Banks Peninsula when he was a child.

We will also add the best of the gooseberries from the coal mining areas and railway lines down South for those in colder areas, and the best of the currants as well. We are finding that amongst these old berries are some that are far stronger and grow far better in organic situations than others and certainly than many of the more modern selections as we have found with the peaches, plums, apples etc.

I’m having a lot of fun finding out what the most favoured old fruit trees are in this area of the Eastern Bay of Plenty. We are on a very warm climatic zone right where we are, but once one goes over the hills inland that changes fast and there is a wide range of old fruit trees around. The old peaches down here have very local names such as Korako, and the Pumpkin peach, and many of the old trees are related back to the person who planted them and don’t really have their own names. I have found a lot of really beautiful old prune plums, even in the very warm Winter and hot Summer areas, as well as many fruiting apricots. There is a lot of interest in re-establishing orchards and using their own trees to do that within the entire area. It’s very isolated down here and fresh food is always at a real premium, with its value being recognised and valued more and more.

Hamata
In the bay that we are living in and all along the coast here, each place where families traditionally lived (and still live) has a name. There is a stunningly beautiful area in this bay called Hamata, where one branch of the Delamere family live - the descendants of Karauna and Tauoha Delamere, Missie’s grandparents. I’m helping Missie save the old fruit trees that were planted by her grandparents in the 1920’s, in some cases by growing new trees from the old to plant again.

Like many other orchards along the Eastern Bay of Plenty, this one was planted around 1920. The trees that are remembered most and best are the Blackboy peaches, the Korako peaches, figs, pears, Pumpkin peaches, grapes, red and yellow apples (probably Red and Yellow Delicious), green cooking apples, and red skinned and fleshed plums, along with the old prune plums.

It was traditional and still is along here, to dig holes before planting trees and then fill them with fish waste, kina shells, seaweed and the ashes of fires into which went bones. These trees were looked after for many years by the grandparents, but the next generation left the coast for work. The old orchard became overgrown until Missie’s parents retired and came back to live. They then cleaned up the old orchard and planted more trees which include apricots still fruiting well, and citrus. Again the next generation left to find work and have now come back to retire and take care of the orchards and gardens. It is very special to be able to go into a garden and see many generations of the one extended family working there and taking care of trees planted by their great great grandparents, as these children - Georga, Dayhan and Jordan (see above) were doing in Missie’s garden the day I went to see her. Here they are standing under the remains of one of the old figs, over looking Whitianga Bay.

Andrew Land’s Hokianga Selections

We have written before about the work, gardens and families of Joseph, Catherine and family, and Andrew, Val and family, the “Lands” who live in Whirinaki and who we have a close relationship with. Joseph’s focus is growing the veges and the seeds to enable them to grow their food with no external imports. There are many lines of Joseph’s seed in our seed catalogue each Spring. Andrew’s focus is on the fruit. This season Andrew has added some of his own Hokianga Selections - and they are peach seedlings. Many of us are finding that seedling peaches often perform better than grafted trees, if they are the very old genetically stable varieties. These are lines Andrew has found to be stable and top performers in his conditions, which are heavy clay, relatively high rainfall, humid conditions and warm Winters.

Jackson Peach: This peach is named after an early settler who lived in this valley (up Jackson Road), and the peach trees were found around the old homestead where Jackson lived in early 1900. There are lots of these peaches around the Hokianga. It has medium size fruit, white flesh, clingstone, and strong sweet flavour. It is an abundant cropper, ripe late Feb, resistant to leaf curl.

Joe’s Golden Queen: This peach has a similar story to Jackson’s peach, and must have been brought into the Hokianga by an early settler. These are the two varieties that fill our preserving jars each Summer without fail! It is of medium size, golden flesh, clingstone, a hardy tree, abundant cropper, good eating/bottling and ripe mid March.

Andrew’s Golden Juicy: This is Andrew’s favourite. Found in a friends backyard in Auckland many years ago and it always produces good quality fruit. It has large fruit, golden, clingstone flesh, vigorous tree, good eating, ripe early Feb.

In a recent letter from Andrew he said the following… useful words for us all. In the garden he is talking about the land being prepared for planting by horse!

"Our gardens are looking good this year even though we’ve had record rainfalls this Winter/Spring. I think it’s because we have been careful with our soil. The maize and lupin stalk fibre (carbon; Kay) keep air in the soil and stop it getting water logged, also we always row up straight after cultivating with the disks, even if we are not ready to plant. This prevents water logging. Some locals have just about killed their gardens by rotary hoeing the heavy rain, then it goes hard and flat so they rotary hoe again etc...”
 

1. They are charitable trusts, or not for profit legal entities, with a Deed of Trust and a Purpose Statement to direct the Trusteees in protecting community values, and promoting community development within a defined area, district or region.
2. Sections of land and/or resources owned by the Trust are leased to individuals or groups for their exclusive use. These leases, and their conditions, protect the rights of the tenants for privacy and security, and protect the rights of the Trust in maintaining community values. Leases for house titles are frequently up to 99years, leases for land uses or businesses would usually be shorter.
3. The conditions under which leases can be sold are set within the 'ground' conditions of the lease. These preserve the affordability of the housing or resource use, and prevent market driven appreciation of values. These measures have the advantages of :
   • encouraging easier entry into trust properties for young people and those on low incomes;
   • encouraging capital investment in productive purposes rather than speculation;
   • encouraging a strong community economy
4. The governance of the Trust is performed by a board of Directors, who are chosen by a defined 'community'. This can vary depending on the nature of the Trust. Some will be exclusively representatives of tenants, others may include representatives of the wider community.
5. The trustees of the Community Land Trussing available funds to invest in development which furthers the goals of the community according to the Trust Deed and constitution.t are responsible for u

There are many examples around the world, with many different contexts and purposes.  Here are a few links for your information:

The Wye Community Land Trust
Cold Pond Community Land Trust
The National Community Land Trust Network
The Community Land Trust Model
E.F. Schumacher Society Link
Building a Sustainable Island Community
Land In Common
School Of Living

In addition Kay Baxter and Bob Corker, both as individuals, and as directors of the Koanga Institute are planning on setting up rural Community Land Trust, probably in the South Island area, in the near future.  (this will be the new home base for the Institute)

For more information on this, link to New Community Land Trust

Henry has been an amazing inspiration for me over many years, and has been perhaps NZ's most important individual seed saver. He kept many seeds alive that were the treasured seeds of our great grandparents - these would be gone today without Henry's dedication. He was a passionate seed saver well before it was fashionable, and before the importance of this work was more widely understood.

Not only did he keep many hundreds of seed lines alive,  both vegetables and flowers, he actively encouraged everybody he could find who would  listen to become seed savers. He was, right up until his death, finding special seeds and passing them on. The last seed line he sent to the Koanga Institute was of a wild salsify (weed) that he found growing in the garden of the Cheviot Rest Home where he was living. He saw that it has a huge root and so was potentially valuable. He saved it from being weeded out by the gardeners and shared the seed around. We've called it the Cheviot Salsify.

Henry kept in touch with several regional seed saver groups  around NZ, particularly the Southern Seed Exchange and the Southland Seed Exchange as well as the Auckland Seed Exchange, constantly giving advice, sharing seed, and doing everything he could to promote the saving of our heritage seeds.

Henry was a grandson  of the de Malmanche family, one of the original French settler families of Akaroa, and it was in his grandmother's garden at Takamatua, he acquired his love of gardening and seeds. He had in his collection several lines of seed from his grandmothers garden, in particular the Black Seeded Runner Bean we call Takamatua, Sutton's Dwarf Broadbeans, the very special Salad peas that have tasty tendrils great in salads, as well as edible peas,  and my favourite White Ball Turnips, which have delicious tops as well as tender sweet turnips.

He officially passed his entire collection to the Koanga Institute in 2007, and as Bob and I carried the chest of drawers out to the ute, two tame kereru perched above us, on the powerlines, to observe its passing  -  we will never forget that. in his original wooden chest of drawers where he kept the seed under the watchful eye of his tame kereru.., the seed keeper.......in 2007. He handed us 150 lines of vegetable seed, and many more flowers. We will do our best to honor him and all those that came before, by keeping these seed lines strong for those yet to come.

In  honor of Henry's dedication to seed saving, we are pleased to announce an annual award in his name. The Henry Harrington Award will be awarded each year to a talented young gardener who shows a love for seed saving, as was Henry's wish. Details will be in the next issue of Organic NZ, and here on the Koanga website.

Thank You Henry…. farewell, A job well done!

Over the years they have had a very vital influence on the food plants of the north, and even now, I would say Dalmatian Beans are the best kept secret of the old people in the north. Logan Forest who has contributed articles in our catalogues before has written this history of the Dalmatians around the Kaipara for us. In our last February catalogue Logan told us about the earliest pakeha settlers around the Kaipara, bringing in the very earliest of the European food plants and this story of the coming of the Daly  gardeners follows on from that. Many of the fruit trees we’ve been collecting come from  old plantings of the Dalmatians and earlier.
 
By Logan Forest.
Austria’s Dalmatians, Yugoslavs mostly came from Croatia or Yugoslavia, because of famines and the failure of the wine industry (Phylloxia and fungus diseases in the grapes) and layoffs at the shipyards in the regions, men had to look further a field for livelihood.
 
They started to appear in N.Z. in 1880, sailors who saw jobs in the timber mills, and then to the gum fields. The gum fields were a very harsh life, temporary shacks made from sacks and kerosene cans cut open and flattened out. And always moving from one gum field to another in search of Kauri gum.
 
1890 to 1910 saw a huge migration of them arriving, mostly single men, a few with wives, after the men made enough money most went back to their country for a wife, then some returned to N.Z. although many went home for good.
 
It was at this time 1896…1905., that larger fields of gum lands opened up, allowing the gum digger to stay longer in one place, some now had enough money to buy land, or a lease, and settlements started to grow, with the gum diggers building permanent homes.
 
That settled life meant gardens were grown, and more plants bought to N.Z. Originally 1880s..1890s only saw figs and beans, cabbage and peas moving from camp to camp with them, then spinach and grapes came out and survived, 1900 saw them bring arum lilies, Lilly bulbs, agapanthus, beans, peach,more grapes& figs, small pumpkin, carrots, acid free tomatoes, flower bulbs: snowdrops, gladioli, iris, aloe vera, geranium and asters.

Our challenge is to find something that will work well in our humid NZ climates.We made a large cabinet based on the idea of evaporative cooling, but placed it on the shady side where it was the most practical for us to access, and dripped water onto it.  It was more a water cooled safe. This worked well most of the year, but struggled in the summer, when we most needed it.  We got around this by putting 5 litres of ice in it each day (from our freezer).  Next time we'll try putting it directly in the sun, to see what difference it makes.In the meantime we'd love to hear from others with any other ideas.